


The path is always there

by snaildetective



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol, Amnesiac Courier (Fallout), Blood and Injury, Christianity, Eventual Smut, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Honest Hearts DLC, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Independent New Vegas (Fallout), Original Character(s), Rough Sex, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Spoilers, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2019-07-10 12:43:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 52
Words: 213,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15949601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snaildetective/pseuds/snaildetective
Summary: Courier Six ends up skipping town and lying low in Utah for a while. She remembers nothing about her past. Of course she meets a man who can't let go of his.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> It will get explicit in later chapters.
> 
> This will probably end up being a bit long. I'll tag for updates. It begins with the start of the Honest Hearts dlc and jumps back into the main plot of New Vegas. Features an independent Vegas.

"Joshua Graham."

He looked up as Waking Cloud appeared around the opening of the passageway. She was usually so quiet that he never heard her approaching, but her footsteps were faster today.

"He's here." Her voice was low and urgent. Joshua's hands stilled on the pistol he was cleaning. "Courier Six is here in Zion. Follows-Chalk went to get him. The caravan was attacked by White Legs." He set the pistol onto the table.  _This one was close. They're getting bolder._ The tips of his fingers traced the whorls in the rough wood grain of the table. It hurt. He drew a breath and spoke.

"Are the White Legs gone?"

Waking Cloud looked down. Her voice was joyless.

"Yes. It appears that the courier was the only survivor of the ambush."

Joshua exhaled sharply and tilted his head back. He studied the grooves in the red rock above his head as he tried to gather his thoughts. _Unfortunate, but that figures._ A silent prayer for the travelers that hadn't survived ran through his mind. And as for the one that did...

"What would you do about him?"

Without a doubt, if Joshua truly had it his way, someone like Waking Cloud would be in charge, and he'd simply be cleaning guns and teaching people how to aim. However, as long as the situation with the White Legs continued, he bore some measure of individual responsibility for the benefit of the many. It was regrettable, but with the threat of destruction looming on the horizon, it was what needed to be done to protect Zion. He would do anything necessary to keep them all safe. 

Waking Cloud thought for a moment.

"Follows-Chalk is bringing him here as we speak. We should give the courier aid."

Joshua tapped his fingers on the edge of the table. Her inclination toward hospitality was exactly what he expected, but he had to consider the more unsavory side of things for everyone else's sake.

"You're not worried about allowing him to stay?"

Waking Cloud frowned.

"Of course I am worried," she responded. "But all we have heard is stories. We have no idea what kind of man the courier is, and we won't until we speak with him." Joshua rolled that around in his mind. This courier might be useful to the tribes, and he was surely in no position to refuse their request for help right now. The road back to the Mojave was long and treacherous, and they ought to take advantage of this apparent stroke of misfortune, if they could. The Lord worked in ways that were not always clear at first. 

"Bring him to me."

At Joshua's direction, Waking Cloud gave him a grim look that she had clearly intended to be a smile, but hadn't quite pulled off convincingly.

"I will. I am sure you have much to discuss."

After all he had been through and all he had done, Joshua had managed to find a sanctuary, a safe respite from the struggles of the outside world, and yet, here was this ghost of the Mojave knocking on his door. He wasn't exactly prepared to deal with it, but when did trouble ever strike on time?

"Yes." He tapped his fingers on the table. "We do."

Waking Cloud turned on her heel, then looked at him over her shoulder.

"I have faith in you," she said, and then she was gone down the passageway, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Joshua prayed that her faith wasn't misplaced. He stared at the spot she had been moments before. The firelight from the torch danced across the wall of the cave.

They knew the caravan was coming, of course. Caravans attempted to enter Zion from time to time, and the residents never discouraged them. Recently, a few of the caravan companies had shown renewed interest in running a route by Zion, but the increasing frequency of White Legs attacks had prevented any of the companies from staying for long. A runner brought Joshua the list of goods being imported, as well as the names of the merchants and guards. He always required such information before caravans entered to ensure that no unsavory persons or things breached Zion. There hadn't been an attempt on his life in some time, but it was not wise to let his guard down.

The runner passed the list to him two weeks ago - Jed Masterson was on it, as usual; as well as an assortment of hired guards. Some were familiar, some were new but not noteworthy. The last name had given him pause - Courier Six - not a name at all, really, but a mimicry of one. A previous caravan brought him a few blood-soaked stories about the courier, and death seemed to follow wherever he tread. There was no way of telling which reports were real, and which were fiction. Such was news in the Mojave. The last piece of news Joshua heard was from a trader, telling him that the courier had assassinated one of the most powerful men on the Strip. Joshua had no love for the wickedness and vice of New Vegas, but he couldn't help but be concerned. He wondered what kind of person the courier must be to kill such important men indiscriminately and walk away alive. Perhaps he had already bent the Strip to his will. The thought that the courier might be here for him next flashed through his mind, but he shoved it down.  _There is no possibility he's working with the Legion,_ he thought, remembering the reports of entire camps that he'd destroyed. _But he does not fight for the NCR, either._ The wooden chair creaked as he leaned back in his seat. _Who is he working for, then?_

The footsteps echoed toward him long before they appeared in the mouth of the cavern. That was the benefit of setting up behind a labyrinthine passage. He sat up straight and picked up the next pistol, keeping his eyes down as he resumed cleaning.

"Joshua." Follows-Chalk's voice rang out through the cavern. Two figures stood in the entryway. Joshua ejected the gun's magazine, forcing himself not to look up at them just yet. Follows-Chalk took a hesitant step forward, and gestured to his companion."This is Courier Six."

He placed the magazine on the table, and looked up. Follows-Chalk had a grave expression on his face. Next to him stood a dirty figure in brown leather armor, wearing a face-obscuring helmet. Dried blood crusted all over the leather, completely blocking half of the helmet's eye area. He carried a backpack at his side and a hunting rifle strapped to his back. Somehow, the courier was shorter than he expected. Follows-Chalk gave them one last glance, then slipped out of the passageway to give them some privacy, and Joshua supposed all of his questions would be answered soon enough.

"Well." Joshua pulled the slide back on the pistol. "We should have given you a better welcome on your first visit to Zion, but from what I hear, the White Legs beat us to it."

 _So it begins,_ he thought grimly. _And God only knows how it ends_.


	2. II

The man in front of Six spoke as if he was barely paying her any attention - as if this wasn't a weird situation at all. With him sitting at the table in this eerie cavern, illuminated only by firelight, the entire scene felt like some strange dream she couldn't wake up from.

Of course, he was supposed to be a dream himself. She remembered pushing down the hill from the Mojave Outpost several months ago, the wind howling in her ears and sand gritting between her teeth. More than anything, she had wanted to stay at the outpost bar with her whiskey and the promise of a bed, but something inexplicable had pushed her onward. Maybe it had been Ranger Ghost. The way the cocky smirk died on her face when she mentioned Nipton made the hairs stand up on the back of Six's neck. So she gathered her bag and her gun and made her way northeast. She had to know.

That day, the wind was beating the dried-up lakebed hard, pelting her with stinging grains of sand. It was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her. She cursed and ducked behind a ruined car to wait it out. A brief respite from the sand finally came, and she made out a large flat thing in front of her - a billboard? A sign? She remembered walking toward the thing, confused, and then she turned and saw the projector. Everything clicked into place. It had been a screen of some kind, most likely pre-war. She didn't know why anyone would be watching a screen out here, but it was sometimes hard to understand the ways of the old world simply from the things they left behind. Maybe this was a nice place two hundred years ago.

Her eyes alighted on graffiti scrawled in red on the corner of the screen. _The Burned Man walks. Joshua Graham Lives._ At the time, it meant nothing to her. She shrugged her pack onto her shoulder and kept moving. The screen only stuck out in her mind because of what she found at the end of that walk: Nipton, or rather, the smoking ruins of Nipton. The quiet was the worst part. She stood in front of one of the crucified men, staring directly into his eyes. His ragged, already fading moans and pallid skin told her there was nothing she could do. She stood there helpless as the smoke drifted up into the purple sky, up toward the stars.

She raised her gun and took aim at the man's head before a shout stopped her.

That was the day she saw the Legion for the first time. That was the day she met Vulpes Inculta. He smiled at her, disturbingly serene, but the hungry look in his eyes made her grateful she put her helmet on before he saw her face.

As she traveled further on, she learned more about the Legion; mostly through the remains of their camps that she picked through after raining death upon them, their scant personal belongings spattered with their still-warm blood. Over time, Six's shadow loomed over their western front, and it satisfied her to know the men in red trembled when they heard her name. She heard rumors about the Burned Man, too; always hushed and conspiratorial, as if Caesar himself were waiting around every corner. The caravan guards and bartenders told her the Burned Man was supposed to be a monstrous creature; a demon cast out of Hell.

The man in front of her was striking - white bandages seemed to cover every inch of his body except for his eyes. Even sitting down, she could tell he was someone she wouldn't want to mess with - broad shoulders, sturdy chest.  _He must be strong,_ she noted. But the fear in her stomach began to dissipate. He simply looked like a man sitting at his desk oiling his gun. The way he spoke was different from most people she met: articulate, probably well-educated, if she had to guess.

Then he resumed speaking, and the benign impression faded. As long as she lived, she would never forget that voice. 

"White Legs seem to be the only visitors we have these days, and I wouldn't have expected anyone from the Mojave to come looking for us." Six couldn't see any of his face but his eyes and eyebrows, but from the first second he spoke, she hung on to each word. He continued inspecting the pistols in front of him, like she was interrupting him and he couldn't be bothered to stop. He only periodically looked up, but his gaze was piercing. The gun he was holding dropped on the table with a clatter, then he selected another one. 

"And you're a courier, no less," he growled, "not the one I was expecting, but I suppose he wouldn't have come with a caravan." Six racked her brain for help, but she couldn't remember any of her fellow couriers - except for that poor dead bastard she saw in Primm. He looked up at her again, pausing his handiwork, and his voice softened, almost imperceptibly.

"I don't know if you were close with the other members of your group, but you have my sympathy. I pray for the safety of all good people who come to Zion, even Gentiles, but -" He pulled the slide back. "We can't expect God to do all the work."

Six could never claim to be much of a talker, but she normally knew how to use her sparing words strategically enough to get what she wanted. At this point, she'd persuaded, begged, negotiated, threatened, and flattered her way through plenty of situations. But right now, her words were gone. She just stared at the figure in front of her, transfixed.

"How do you know so much about what happened to me?" She could have sworn she heard the hint of a smirk in his voice as he began to answer her.

"The Dead Horses are capable scouts. Nothing passes into or out of Zion without my hearing of it."

"I'm..." Six shook her head, trying to gather her thoughts. "I'm here with the Happy Trails Caravan Company. I came to make contact with the New Canaanites."

"Happy Trails. I remember. They were good friends." He slammed the pistol down on the table, perhaps a little harder than necessary. "I have bad news for your employers. New Canaan was destroyed, its citizens scattered. All because of the White Legs. And Caesar, of course. The White Legs want to join the Legion. Caesar's rite of passage is the destruction of the New Canaanites." His voice hardened. "Almost assuredly because of me." He looked her up and down like a rancher deciding on a fat Brahmin to butcher. She knew a sizing-up when she saw one.  _Some fucking vacation,_  she thought with exasperation. Of course Caesar's Legion was causing her trouble, even away from the Mojave.

"The good news is, we can help you find your way back. Daniel, one of the other New Canaanites, has made many maps of the region." He picked up another pistol. "The bad news is that we can't help you right now. Not with everything that's going on."

Six watched him as he continued to strip the gun. _So, reading between the lines here...I can't leave,_ she thought. _Not without giving them something, I'm sure._ This man didn't seem like the type to be receptive to any negotiation on her part. He had the advantage. She needed their help, so he was going to get something out of her in return.  _Perhaps the faster I fix this, the faster I get out._ Six straightened up. She hoped the solution involved shooting people, just to save everyone some time.

"I'm not going to leave without offering to help. What can I do?" Graham's eyes flicked back up to her, like he was weighing her words.

"You're a good neighbor to us. We all go through periods of darkness. In such times, we can turn to the Lord but...it's good to have friends." The look he gave her was confusing, to say the least.  _What is this to him?_ She wondered.  _A business deal? A shakedown?_ Six had half a mind to slip out of the camp later that night and get the hell back to the Mojave. If she booked it, she could probably be sitting in the Lucky 38 and tossing back a whiskey sour with Raul by next Thursday evening. However, the battered bodies of her fellow caravan guards made her think twice. The White Legs knew the terrain, and she didn't. She still might have tried it, if not for the real kicker: she was nearly out of stimpaks after wasting them on her now-dead associates.  _Guess I am stuck here._ The thought made her chest tight, but she compelled her breathing to slow, her heartbeat to stay down.

The man slid the brush into the barrel of the pistol without looking up. "Daniel and I need pre-war tools to help navigate beyond Zion. In case we need to evacuate, these instruments will be vital to us. Normally, we would have some of the Dead Horses or Sorrows go looking for them, but many pre-war buildings in this valley are taboo. They won't go inside." Six considered that information carefully. A few days of scouting and shooting animals, and she would be free to go without a fight - quick and painless. She had a feeling that cordiality would go far with this one.

"We have a deal, then. I'll see what I can do." She folded her hands behind her back. The man looked up at her with a strange sincerity.

"Thank you. Follows-Chalk can help you find your way around the valley. He's inexperienced, but he knows enough of our language to ignore the taboos about pre-war buildings." He looked down like he expected her to see herself out now. For some absurd reason, just for a second, she nearly felt sorry for him. _He's a refugee here,_ she realized. Contrary to what her brain was telling her to do, she took another step toward him.

"I - uh, I'm sorry to hear about New Canaan. There's been too much destruction lately." She rubbed her wrist. He stopped cleaning the gun in his hands and looked up at her. Just for a moment, she thought he looked surprised - like the hard edge in his eyes was giving way, at least a little.

"I appreciate your sympathy. But New Canaan is not a place, it's a people. A tribe. When the walls come tumbling down and you lose everything, you always have family. And your family will always have your tribe."

Six had no response to that. The way he said it was so self-assured. She had a fleeting vision of her mother that she couldn't hold on to, reaching out to touch her, but just barely missing. She repeated her list to herself. _She might have had dark eyes; maybe a warm smile, maybe strong arms._ It was impossible to know any more than that.

She thought of all the siblings she had foolishly invented for herself over the past months to pass the time when she was walking on desolate stretches of road. _My own little tribe,_ she thought bitterly. _A tribe of ghosts._ Worse than ghosts, for they probably never actually walked the earth.

"Right." She exhaled slowly. "Okay. I'll be going then." She turned around to leave.

"One more thing." Graham's voice cut through the air behind her. She stopped and faced him. He didn't look up at her.

"You can go ahead and take that helmet off. You're not fooling anyone - " his voice dropped lower. "At least not me. It's apparent that you're not a man." Six froze. It's not like she seriously tried to disguise herself - she liked to keep her face covered in public, and people tended to assume. However, no one had been perceptive or bold enough yet to call her bluff. She stared right back at Graham.  _Caesar's first legate._ Their conversation had gone amicably enough that she had to force herself to remember who she was really talking to.  _I let people assume because of bastards like you._

"Is it really that hard for you - " she pressed on that word, lacing it with venom to ensure he would get the message, "to understand why I want people to think otherwise?" His hands paused on the gun, and his eyes narrowed.

"Other than the threat from the White Legs, we can assure you of your personal safety. There's no need to hide here." His voice was flat. The feeling of exposure made her heart thump hard against her ribs.

"Sure," she bristled, and turned to go. He didn't stop her. She walked down the passageway, feeling her blood run cold.  _I just need to play nice until I can get out of here._ Stewing in her own thoughts, she almost bumped into the young scout that had escorted her to the cave. He had been standing in the mouth of the cave, quite clearly eavesdropping.

"Oh! Hi again." He rubbed his hands together. "So, I will show you where you can drop your things, then I thought you could eat dinner with us. Come with me." He had already turned around, bounding off with quick steps. She shifted the bag on her back, then followed after him. They followed a winding footpath, then Six stopped. Because of all of the commotion, she hadn't really looked around her beyond what was immediately necessary. Her head craned up, and up, and up…

Huge rocks soared up into the darkening blue sky, speckled with stars as far as she could see. Wild plants wrapped around the cliffs in every shade of green. It was nothing like the Mojave. 

"Oh, admiring the view? That's what all the visitors talk about."

She stopped walking, and just looked around. What could she possibly say?  _This is probably the most incredible thing I've ever seen? I'm damn lucky to exist in the same world as this?_

"Yeah, it's...it's something." She pulled the bag higher up on her shoulder. "Let's go." After all, she supposed she would have plenty of time to take it all in.


	3. III

It had been only a few weeks since the night she decided to leave the Mojave, but now, it felt like ages ago. After all she went through to make it to the Strip, that night hit her like a crescendo followed by deafening silence.

That evening in the Tops, the gilded elevator doors opened, and she saw Boone staring off into the distance, his fingers fidgeting over his sunglasses as he turned them in his hands. His head turned as he put the glasses on in one swift motion.

"Six."

She couldn't miss the relief in his voice. He must have been worried, and she felt a small stab of guilt between her ribs for keeping him waiting. The elevator closed behind her, and she mustered up a brave face and went to his side. ED-E beeped behind him, and Six could have sworn he was happy to see her too.

"It's done."

"Well." He stared off down the hall. "You finally did it."

She knew he didn't blame her or think she was wrong. He just took death seriously, even when it was necessary. He scuffed the side of his boot on the plush carpet and looked up at her out of the corner of his eye. Six felt she had come to understand him better after traveling with him over the past few months. The wordless glance he gave her seemed to ask her  _is it over now? Are you okay? What comes next?_

 _Good question_.

"Hey." She lifted her pack up onto her shoulder. "Let's get out of here. We can stop back at the Lucky 38 for a while, then go somewhere else. Maybe back to Novac." She tilted her head. "Is that okay with you?"

"It's not ideal. Still better than this dump." Six couldn't help but almost smile at that.  _Absolutely typical._  They walked to the main lobby, both eyeing the exit.

"Uh, that Benny guy was a real piece of work," Boone mumbled, and she knew it was an offering of consolation.

"Yeah. He got what was coming to him. That's all I'm concerned about." She kept her voice low as they approached the front desk. Benny's former right-hand man noticed her and bounced up to them with an eager expression on his face.

"Hey baby - "

"He's dead." Her voice was devoid of any emotion. His eyes widened.

"Guess that makes me the boss." She looked down and nodded. He cleared his throat and gave her a look that bordered on sympathy. "Hell of a thing, baby. Well, I'll take it from here. Good luck to you. Come back and see us sometime." She nodded again, then pulled her pack up on her shoulder. The faster she and Boone could get to the Lucky, the better.

She hardly had time to throw her pack down before Victor summoned her to speak with Mr. House. When she walked into the penthouse she was still slightly dazed, with no clue in hell what she was going to do next. That all changed during their conversation, which could more accurately be described as a haranguing. Six walked out with the platinum chip tucked safely in her pocket and a newfound resolve to get away for a while. She made it back to the suites, still mulling over everything that just happened. The voices coming from the kitchen told her it was time to put a brave face on for everyone else. They greeted her a little more subdued than usual, cautious to see how she'd react. Six knew they were being considerate, but she hated that feeling of being studied like they were examining her for any sign of damage. She immediately crossed to the pantry and dug out a bottle of whiskey she stashed back there. That lightened the mood a little. Finally, after one of her longest and most difficult days in recent memory, she was sitting around a table with her friends and a drink. All things considered, it wasn't a bad ending.

"ED-E…" Six trailed off. He beeped back at her. "Raul, would you look at him while I'm gone? He's gotten a few nicks and bumps." She reached her hand out and ran it along the top of his metal casing. "But I'm sure with a little work he'll be looking handsome and shiny. Isn't that right?" The robot hovered a few inches higher and beeped again. Arcade and Veronica exchanged incredulous glances at her display of affection that they thought Six didn't notice.

"Sure boss," Raul exhaled a plume of smoke. "I'd love to do some extra work for you on my time off."

"That's what I love about you." Six patted ED-E again. "You're such a team player."

"You sure you're going to be okay?" At the sound of his voice, everyone turned to look at Boone. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Six took a drink from her glass and set it on the table in front of her, folding her hands.

"Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Hell, I might not even have to kill anyone for a while. That's practically a vacation at this point."

Caravan guard work was hardly what most people would call relaxing, but it's not like she felt like kicking her feet up and catching up on her reading. It was just a lot of walking; maybe shooting some geckos if things got really exciting. What she needed was time away to come up with a plan. There were a lot of decisions to make, most of them revolving around that platinum chip. She hadn't quite realized the magnitude of what she had done until she was searching Benny's room and found the securitron in the back - Yes Man, he called himself. That was overwhelming. She certainly didn't trust Mr. House as far as she could throw him, but the possibility of a real alternative almost made her dizzy. She could hand the chip over to House and walk away like she had planned, disappearing back into the Mojave where she came from.

Or, she could take another route entirely, one that would put both her and New Vegas on a course that no one saw coming. It was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Taking a few weeks to make sure about it seemed like a good idea.

Somewhere between the elevator and the kitchen, she made her mind up about what she was going to do. About a week before, someone she met at a trading post along the road had offered her a short-term guard job with a caravan company. Six dismissed it at the time, but she was definitely interested now. They were going to Utah, if she remembered correctly. It didn't really matter at this point. Anywhere that wasn't here was good enough for her. 

After talking for a couple of hours and saying goodnight to everyone, she crept back into the kitchen to pour more whiskey in her glass. Her mind was still racing and she needed to go to sleep that night.

"Hey."

Six wheeled around, glass still in her hand, to see Boone standing in the doorway. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you."

"No, my bad." she rubbed the back of her neck, "I'm still a little jumpy, I guess." He nodded with understanding. "So, what's up?" She could tell he had something on his mind.

"I, uh -" She couldn't tell where he was looking because of the sunglasses, but she had a feeling it wasn't directly at her. "Would you let me go with you to the Northern Passage?" Six couldn't form a response immediately.

"You…" she tilted her head. "You want to see me off?" Boone cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Yeah."

Six bit her bottom lip to stop the smile from forming.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Well," she picked up the bottle of whiskey on the counter and poured a little more in her glass. "It's a deal, then. We leave Wednesday morning."

"All right." He paused for a moment, like maybe he had something else to say, but then turned to go.

"Hey, Boone?" The whiskey was making her brave and stupid and emotional. He turned his head back to her.

"Yes?"

"I'm glad you came with me. You've been a good friend. Thank you." She felt uncomfortable saying it, but it was true. He looked down.

"I told you. I got your back."

She took another drink from her glass, the whiskey burning her throat. She smiled, and she could have sworn she saw the barest hint of a smile on one side of his tanned face. Neither one of them usually did much talking, especially not about stuff like this, but it was enough for her to know he meant it. 

"Thanks, man. I'm going to get some sleep. Goodnight." He gave her a small nod.

"Goodnight, Six. I hope things go okay in Utah."


	4. IV

Things were going okay in Utah, actually. They just weren't going exactly the way she had imagined when she left. Six was jolted out of her thoughts when the young scout in front of her turned around.

"Okay, okay. Let's play a game." Follows-Chalk slowed his steps until Six caught up with him. He stuck his arm out and passed her the box of Sugar Bombs. She shook the cardboard box tentatively, then picked up a piece of the cereal and tossed it in her mouth. Sweet stuff wasn't really her thing, but she was starting to get hungry. The cereal cracked and stuck between her teeth and the syrupy taste made her stomach turn. When Follows-Chalk wasn't looking, she turned and spit behind her as discreetly as she could.

"Sure. What kind of game?" She handed the box back to him and watched as he tipped it back into his mouth. A few days ago, they were in an old gift shop and she threw him a box she found on a dusty shelf. Since then, he grabbed just about every one he could possibly carry.

"How about I say something about me, and you say something about you, and we take turns?" he folded the top of the box down and stuffed it in his shoulder bag. Six scoffed.

"I wouldn't necessarily call that a game. How do you win?"

Follows-Chalk rolled his eyes at her.

"Nobody wins. We just have fun."

"You have an odd definition of fun. But okay." Six tried to return the smile he beamed at her. Over the last week, she found out she often had a hard time saying no to him. He was a big help in showing her around the trails, and was more than capable of watching her back with his war club while she climbed through the narrow walls of the canyons and rummaged through old ranger stations and gift shops. It was mundane work, but it kept her mind occupied, and that was always a welcome relief. Six was no longer even seriously considering sneaking out of the valley anymore. 

Their work was going more slowly than it should have, because Joshua Graham thought it was best that no one slept outside the camp until the White Legs were dealt with. Six figured out pretty quickly that whatever Graham said was what the Dead Horses did. Life in the camp was efficiently organized, but also irritatingly strict, so they had to return to the group every sundown, lugging whatever supplies they were able to scavenge. Follows-Chalk was especially under Graham's sway - it was all  _Joshua says this_ and  _Joshua thinks that_ with him. Six tried not to look as sour as she felt when Follows-Chalk said his name.

As for herself, since their first conversation in Angel Cave, she managed to avoid Graham almost entirely. Her work with Follows-Chalk kept her busy during the days, and he was sociable and talkative enough that she could stay by his side when she was back in the camp at night. When they were apart, she kept to herself: wandering around the trails, cleaning her guns, or tinkering with old electronics she had found. A few times, Graham's eyes fell on her from across the camp and it seemed like he was about to approach her. It wasn't hard to tell - despite the bandages, his intentions were written all over his face and body. He'd stare at her, shoulders squared off in her direction until he finally started toward her. When she noticed, she'd swiftly find something to keep her busy, or excuse herself from whatever situation she was in before he could make his move. He just wasn't very good at being sneaky. She had to admit, the confusion and irritation on his face when she smoothly evaded him did entertain her, in a mildly sadistic way.

"Okay," Follows-Chalk looked up at the ridge they were approaching. "I'll start. I had a pet gecko when I was young. I found him after he was left behind in his nest. Once he got bigger, he started trying to bite the other children. I had to let him go. He never bit me, though." He sounded utterly forlorn as they picked over the outcropping.

"Well, damn. I'm sorry."

He looked back up at her, and gave an offhand shrug, despite his obvious dejection.

"It's okay. I'm sure he's happier with the other geckos, anyway. Okay, your turn." Six turned her head back as she tried to think of something to possibly follow that.

"I kind of have a pet, too. He's a robot." Follows-Chalk shot her an incredulous glance.

"A robot?"

"Yeah, you know. A creature made out of metal and electronics."

"No way. You made that up." His eyes narrowed. She shrugged and stepped over a particularly large and gnarled tree root.

"Nope. Honest. He's a little round robot that floats behind me. He beeps. That's how we talk."

"That's amazing."

"Yeah, I found him and fixed him up. He's pretty cool." Follows-Chalk took a minute to process that as they crossed another streambed. He waded right in, and Six hesitantly followed him. The water rose to her shins and was cold and clear. People drank straight from the rivers here, to her astonishment. Nothing in Zion was really irradiated. Aside from the warfare, the place really was as idyllic as it looked.

"Okay, my turn. My mother died when I was very young." He deftly maneuvered around a rock that had been worn slick from the water. She noted it and avoided it too.

"I'm sorry about that." Six's voice was quiet.

"It's okay. I mourn for her, of course, but it's hard to miss someone you don't really remember, right?" Six felt her throat go dry.

"Yeah." She concentrated on the stone in front of her.

"Your turn," he chided as they finally cleared the stream, shaking the water from their boots.

"Uh, I used to deliver mail for a living. Packages, and stuff."

"Well, of course! That's why you are called a courier, right? I already knew that. You have to go again." She waved her hands with exasperation.

"Come on -"

"Go again," he said, not even tossing her a glance over his shoulder. She sighed.

"Fine. I shot a cigarette out of a guy's mouth once." Follows-Chalk gave a low whistle.

"And you didn't hurt him?"

"Well." Six planted her boot on a flat part of the rock. "No. I did shoot him a few seconds later. On purpose. I just shot the cigarette out of his mouth first." His mouth fell open.

"What - why?"

Six shrugged.

"We sneaked up on a raider camp and the guy on watch was on a smoke break. I thought it'd be funny. And it was. The look on his face…" she trailed off when the shocked expression didn't fade from his face. Maybe that was a little too gruesome for him. She sighed. "Anyway. Okay, I went." Follows-Chalk was uncharacteristically silent as he stepped over a hole in the ground.

"Is it dangerous, where you come from?" His tanned face became more drawn, like the question had been on his mind for a while.

"Parts of it are. From what people tell me, things have gotten worse lately, with the Legion and the gangs. But some parts are safe enough, like the Strip. Especially if you've got money."

"The Strip?" His tone lifted again. "That's where all the casinos are, right?"

"Yep," she replied. "Casinos and theaters and bars. And tons of people." 

"Is it beautiful?"

Six paused as she stared out at the red rocks that stretched out into the crisp blue sky, reminding her just how enormous the world around her truly was. 

"Not like here. But in its own way, yes. I guess you could say that. Staring out at the lights in the city at night is beautiful. The area right outside the Strip, though - it's sad. People don't have enough housing or food. They don't even always have clean water. It sort of pisses me off, to tell you the truth." She kicked a rock and it skittered a few feet ahead of her. "It's very different from here. You'd be surprised." Follows-Chalk gave her a sidelong glance.

"I'd like to see it, someday. This is the only place I've ever known."

"If that's what you want, you could come stay with me. I have some business to sort out when I return, but after that," she gestured toward him, "if you're still interested, you're welcome any time." Utter joy shone through his face.

"Really? You'd let me?" She nodded. His mouth hung open slightly. "Thank you so much, I'd love to visit you. I just - " his expression darkened. "I feel bad about leaving my family, and Joshua - I don't know what he'd say." Six bit her bottom lip and nodded.  _Of course he has something to do with this._ Of course the poor kid was reluctant. Graham had probably told him all kinds of frightening things about the Mojave.  _Half of them are probably his own fault._

"Look, if what he thinks about it matters to you, what if I talked to him? Just to see what he thinks?" Six knew damn well what Graham probably thought about it, but Follows-Chalk didn't need to be discouraged. The heartfelt gratitude in his eyes made her certain.

"You'd do that for me?" He smiled even bigger than he had before.

"It's no trouble. We'll have a chat."

They continued on back to the camp, with Follows-Chalk asking her-rapid fire questions about New Vegas, and Six trying her best to answer him. She told him about Mr. House and his robots, about the Lucky 38, about her friends and associates back home. He seemed especially entranced with her stories about the performers in the Tops. Six promised him she'd take him to a show sometime.

The rest of the walk home passed quickly. It was nearly sundown by the time they returned. The rest of the camp was gathered around one of the fire pits, talking and eating dinner as the smoke drifted lazily into the sky. Follows-Chalk dropped his bag and let out a huge yawn.

"We're about done." She picked up his bag. "I'll take this stuff to the cave."

He nodded. "Whatever they're cooking smells good. I'm going to get food for us."

Six slung the bag over her shoulder.

"All right, see you in a minute."

She entered the mouth of the cave, blinking as she adjusted to the lack of light. The tents in the front cavern were empty. She walked past them, stepping lightly. All she had to do was drop the stuff off in the back cavern quickly and go.

 _With any luck, Graham won't be back there_ , she thought. Six rounded the corner of the passageway as the torchlight flickered against the walls. Her eyes focused on the table in the back.  _Just drop the bags off. In and out._

Unfortunately, she realized, as her eyes alighted on the figure in the corner, luck was not with her this time.


	5. V

She tightened her grip on the sack of supplies as she reached for the ranger helmet she found a couple of days ago.  _Shit._ It wasn't there. She must have left it back at her campsite. It was too late now. Graham hadn't turned around, but he had to know that she was there. He didn't move for a moment, then glanced up over his shoulder.

"Come in." His voice was nonchalant, as if she was just a neighbor popping by to borrow an egg or something. For a moment, she stood in the entryway, but then her feet and her brain finally got their act together and she started taking uneasy steps toward him. She circled around wide to get a better glance at what he was doing.

His head was craned down, and Six was close enough now to see that he was reading a book. She didn't know how it was possible to do nothing more than sit quietly and turn a page in a way that looked severe, but he managed somehow. He carefully folded over the corner of the page he was on and closed the book. The exposed skin on his fingers was ridged and mottled with pink and tan scar tissue. He set the book down on the table to his side, soft and deliberate, and rested his hand on the cover.

She looked back at his face and really hoped he hadn't caught her openly staring. His dark eyebrows were furrowed as his eyes searched her face.

"No helmet today, I see." He tapped his fingertips on the book, one at a time in a smooth pattern. She watched for a second, then her gaze darted back to his face.

"I forgot it this morning. I'm not doing so well with the no-coffee thing." He raised an eyebrow at her in response. "I know that sounds like I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not."

"There wasn't any in the ranger stations?"

She must have been more tired than she thought, because she almost dropped her lackluster demeanor as she rubbed her eyes with her free hand.

"I checked them all, but no. Not a single packet. I guess they managed to drink it all before the world ended." He said nothing. Her fingers tightened around the strap of the bag and she remembered why she was here. "Well, here's the stuff we scavenged." She straightened up and hoisted the bag from her shoulder. "Where should I put this?" To her mild surprise, he rose from his chair, pushed it in under the table, and crossed the distance between them.

"I'll take it and put everything away. Thank you."

Six lifted the bag into his outstretched hand. As she passed it off, it seemed like he deliberately avoiding touching her hand at all. She pulled away more awkwardly than she would have liked and rubbed the back of her neck.

"Uh, the compass in there was broken when I found it, but I fixed it. It should work now, but let me know if it doesn't." He turned back to the table and laid the bag on top of it.

"I will." He faced her again. "I'm sure it works fine."

She looked at the cave ceiling above her. It was kind of dark and depressing in here. She wondered how he stood it.

"Okay. I'm going now." One swift nod, and she was on her way out. Then, she remembered her conversation with Follows-Chalk. "Oh, wait," she said, spinning back around to him. He was still standing in the same spot, as if he hadn't had time to react to her initial departure. "I have something else to talk to you about." He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Go on."

Six decided to get straight to the point. She had a feeling that he wasn't going to like what she had to say, so she hardened her voice right off the bat.

"Follows-Chalk and I were talking, and he mentioned he has a desire to travel outside of Zion." Deliberately, she paused to gauge his reaction.

"Right." He didn't seem to have any strong feelings about that. She pushed forward.

"He said he thought you might not exactly approve."

Graham sighed.

"Well, I can't say I have positive opinions about such - civilized places." The words came out with slight distaste, as if he were maybe infusing it with a surprisingly sardonic tint. "But I'm sure you could inform him more suitably than I could. Follows-Chalk is a young man, but he can make his own decisions."

The rest of the words she prepared evaporated. That was not what she expected in the slightest.

"You haven't told him not to go?" 

"No. I wouldn't do that. I know he respects my opinion, but I don't want him - or anyone else, for that matter - looking to me for advice."

Six was struggling to put this all together. He had to be bullshitting her, and that was never a smart move. Lies were fickle weapons, but she'd weaved and wielded enough in her own service that it was laughable to have them turned against her. It was almost offensive, even.

"Okay, wait." She held her hand up. "You're actually trying to convince me that although you put yourself in charge and run the whole show around here, somehow, you also don't want anyone listening to you?" She kept her voice cold. Through the bandages, she saw she had successfully pushed him. In an instant, his shoulders tensed and his jaw tightened. He was pissed, but there was also an edge of surprise in his demeanor. Maybe he wasn't used to anyone questioning him. 

"Listen carefully." Instead of rising, his voice chilled with rage - surprising, she'd taken him more for a the yelling type - but effective nonetheless. At the barest drop of his tone, she felt ice in her blood. "I don't know what ideas you've developed about the way things work around here, but I did not put myself in charge." In his indignation, he practically spat the last words at her. "I am merely responsible for protecting these people. You, on the other hand, are here only because you have to be. Your imitation of charity isn't as believable as you think. I have no reason to think that you care about what's best for anyone else beside yourself."

That riled her, but she willed herself to stay calm, to not to flinch or break eye contact with him as she advanced on him; approaching the monster as if he couldn't harm her. She drew herself up as tall as she could manage - she was no taller than an average person, but she made damn sure not to carry herself like one - and he matched her, eyes flashing. He was terrifying like this; the looming menace carried in the whispers drifting on the Mojave wind, but she kept on glaring at him as if it didn't bother her. She'd killed more Legion men than she could even count, each new strike of death more disgusting and creative than the last, and just because he wasn't in red didn't make him any different.  _Show any vulnerability, and he wins._

"Yeah, I'm not as dumb as I must look. I know who you are. Don't blame me for not buying this whole moral act."

"I don't." An edge of uncertainty cracked through the anger in his voice. "I don't."

They stared at each other, both of them unsure of what to do next. Six clamped her mouth shut, but she felt her front beginning to waver.

"Well - "

"I -"

They both stopped in surprise as the tension burst and they tried to start talking at the same time.

"You first," Six urged, biting at the side of her thumb. Graham looked up at the ceiling like he was gathering his thoughts.

"I understand your hesitation. You don't trust me. You have good instincts." His hands went to his hips and he turned to the side, giving her some space.

"No, it's not about that. It's more like - I don't know. Evidence? " She realized that probably offended him anyway, but this time she didn't mean it to. The bite was gone from her voice. It was just honesty. If the things she'd heard about him were true, then he had a list of nightmarish misdeeds longer than she could count, and she wasn't about to drop her guard around him or cut him any slack.

Six wasn't big on giving people the benefit of the doubt. She had very little trust to give, and high standards for earning it. This man might have smoothly manipulated her into being at his beck and call, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of calling their arrangement anything else than what it was. She'd get the work done thoroughly as always, but she wasn't going to put her heart or belief into it - a tiny and consistent internal rebellion that fueled her in even the most unpleasant situations.

"Fine. All I am saying is that I have no illusions about what I am here to do. You can think whatever you want about me, and you have every right to, but I am not here to tell the Dead Horses how to live. There are much better people than me among them. I am only here to help them win their battles. I would never want - " he broke off, then met her eyes again and continued with a measured tone. "I would never want them, or anyone, to think or act like me. I just hope to be useful to them in the only way I can be."

For another long moment, her eyes moved from his face, to his clenched hands, then back to his eyes. Maybe she was going soft, or she just wanted to be done with this conversation, but for some reason, it seemed like he was being candid.

"Okay." She exhaled. He narrowed his eyes, like he was searching her face for some additional response. "I get it," she added.

"I thought you might." He relaxed almost imperceptibly. Then he looked at her in a way that confused her - some kind of realization, or maybe remembrance - but it was gone before she placed it. Maybe he hadn't even been aware of it.

"Well," she began, "I'll tell him you said you don't mind him leaving, then." 

"Very well." He folded his arms again, and she knew she should go. It had already been a long day when she first walked in the cavern, but now she felt absolutely drained. His voice brought her back from her own thoughts. "If he goes to New Vegas, you'll watch out for him, won't you?"

"Of course I will." Their eyes met, and she looked away. He didn't go back to his seat. As she turned around, she had a strong suspicion he was still staring at her, even with her back turned. It made her skin crawl, and she almost turned around to look, but she forced herself to stay strong and ignore it. Her feet and eyelids felt heavy as she wound her way back into the main area, then through the mouth into the camp. Night had fallen long ago. Follows-Chalk startled from his seat and got up to meet her. The place next to the fire he had been sitting at was nearly empty, with only a few other stragglers still out. The fire was low and no one had bothered to rekindle it.

"Where have you been? You were gone so long." The concern on his face was plain.

"Got busy talking. Sorry." She rubbed her eyes again. "Is there any dinner left?" He put a hand on her shoulder and guided her over to the fire.

"Of course. I saved you some. Sit down," he urged. Six sat down on the ground, her muscles aching. Follows-Chalk handed her a bowl and wouldn't quit staring at her as she started to eat. It looked like maize, and yucca, and something else. It didn't matter. It was food and she was hungry.

"Is everything okay?" he asked with trepidation. She looked up from the bowl.

"Yeah?"

He looked down at his hands, a little guilty.

"I mean, with you and Joshua."

"Oh." She cleared her throat. "Don't worry about that, okay? It's fine." Follows-Chalk spent a lot of time with her, and he was better than most people at picking up on her mood. He probably already noticed the way she avoided Graham all week.

"Hey." She began. "I talked to him about you coming to the Mojave." Eagerness lit up his eyes, followed by hesitation.

"Did he say anything bad?" Six shook her head.

"No, not at all. He said you should make your own decision, and if it's what you want, he supports you."

The smile he gave her made it all worth it.

"Thank you!" He leaned over and threw his arms around her in a hug. Her body tensed, then she relaxed. That definitely wasn't something she was used to. As physically affection as the Dead Horses were, she supposed she was going to have to learn to like it.

"Hey, no problem. We're gonna have to think of some fun places to go." She leaned back and returned his smile.

They spent half an hour by the fire. Follows-Chalk somehow came up with even more questions about the food and the people and the buildings in New Vegas, and she dutifully answered him. She was dead tired, but she felt better now. _Maybe even happy,_ she realized, as the fire next to them died and the smoke drifted up into the night sky.


	6. VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter six, appropriately concerning Courier Six.
> 
> Sorry for the delay in updating, I just moved and things have been wall to wall. This is mostly just a flashback/background building chapter. Hope everything is going well for y'all reading this, and thank you for the kudos and comments! This is my first ever fic so I really appreciate the feedback. 
> 
> warnings for: death, VERY graphic depiction of violence, brief suicide mention

Once during her travels, Six found a field that had received so much radiation that it was completely silent. When she slogged through the edges of the liquid waste and stood in the middle of the dry ground, she could see that nothing moved. No plants swayed in the breeze. No insects or reptiles darted through the air or across the ground. Certainly, there were no people there - no sounds of breathing, or footsteps, or voices, so quiet that it felt like her own breath stopped in her lungs. It was a dizzying expanse of nothing, surrounding her at all sides, dead and inhospitable to any kind of life.

That place was was the closest she could come to describing how she had felt those first few days after waking up in the doctor’s house. She tried to feel something, anything, as she sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her knees together, shivering under the thin sheet. Grief, anger, fear, anything at all to reach out and hang her existence on. She needed some kind of framework to understand what just happened, but there was nothing. It was loss so total, devastation so complete, that she didn't know where to begin.

 _Maybe this isn't real,_ she thought more than once. _Maybe I'm actually still dead_. But as the hours stretched into days and the days into weeks, her swath of the world grew wider, and she became gradually convinced it existed, and she was still in it.

It was like she was gripping onto something in between living and dying. Doc Mitchell told her in addition to the damage from the bullets ("two nine millimeter rounds, piercing L. temp lobe at hairline," according to her chart), she had been under the ground for at least several hours, and probably hadn't been able to breathe right or properly regulate her body temperature ("potential oxygen deprivation," he scrawled next to a question mark). Not to be flippant, but she sure felt it. Her head fucking hurt every second of every new day she was subjected to.

When she opened her eyes and struggled up to a sitting position, the doctor looked downright scared and had done a bad job of hiding it.

“Easy there.” He held up his hands. “Not many people could be moving around like that, after what you’ve been through.” She knew she was upright, she knew she was looking at a man, but beyond that, her brain just grasped at terrifying nothingness. The sheets were so white, and the light filtering in through the window was so bright that her head throbbed even harder.

“Well, I ought to introduce myself. I’m Doc Mitchell. I’m the town doctor in Goodsprings. That's where you are. You’ve been out cold for a few days.” His face pulled into a grimace. “Tell you the truth, I was damn near convinced you weren't gonna wake up again. Can you tell me your name?” 

“No,” she said, so quiet she almost couldn’t even hear herself. Her voice sounded strange in her ears and burned her throat as it rasped out. _That’s mine?_

The doctor frowned.

“It’s okay, hon. Whatever you got mixed up in, I don't care. You're safe here.”

“No." It felt like the only word she even knew at this point. She meant something different. The words in her mind were slippery and evading, hard to pick out and seize, but they were still there. “I don't know.”

“Okay.” He looked down at his papers. “Where you from, kid?”

“I don’t know." The harsh whisper forced its way out of her throat again. He stared at her, sympathy clouding his eyes.

“Arizona, maybe? California? Mexico?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” He wrote something down. “No worries. We’ll figure it out.”

 

It was a well-intentioned lie, but a lie all the same. They never figured it out. Doc Mitchell did his best to work backwards and tell her what he could about herself. It was utterly disorienting to try and piece together her life from a post-hoc examination of her body. 

He flashed her an apologetic look, then worked his gloved fingers into her mouth, peeling back her cracked lips to look at the wear on her teeth.

“I’m sorry about this, by the way.” He stuck a finger all the way in the back of her jaw. Her mind was blank. She couldn't process anything other than than a vague, animalistic displeasure. He pulled his hands out and took the gloves off. “You got all your teeth. As far as I c’n tell, you're still in your twenties.”

She said nothing. He looked at her stomach, too, pushing up the thin fabric of the white shirt that draped her body.

“No sign of ever bearing a child.” He lifted her wrist with his hand, and she watched him, disinterested, as if her limbs belonged to someone else. She silently endured his prodding until he leaned back and folded his hands. “Other than the obvious, you’re healthy, and you got a fair amount of nicks and scars. I’d say you’ve had an adventurous life. A soldier, maybe? Does “NCR’ ring a bell?” She stared at him, blank, but then it pulled something up.  _California. Soldiers._

“Yes.” Her voice was slow. “I know what that is.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Are you one of them?”

“No.” She was only halfway certain. It felt like it should be a “no,” so that's what she said. There was nothing else to go off of.

The doctor set a mirror in her hands, and guided her to hold it up. She looked at the face staring back at her. Purple and green bruises mottled across one side of the face, from the eye socket to the cheekbone. Her eyes traveled to the white gauze covering the side of her forehead.

“I did my best. Your head was a mess though. I got the lead out, but you’ll have plenty of scarring. And going off of that shiner, I'm guessin’ those fellas roughed you up a little, too.” She looked back at him with the only thing she could summon: apathy. Her hands found the side of the bed, and she pushed herself to stand. The doctor held his hands up again.

“Whoa, wait, you don’t need to be walking yet - “

She crossed over to the table in the middle of the room. A few folded pieces of paper were scattered on it.

“Oh, that one’s yours. Sorry for going through your pockets, but I checked to see if you had anything that might be able to identify you. There was just that letter, and that cross on the table.”

She picked up the letter. It was a delivery order - Mojave Express.

 _Yes,_ she thought, as her eyes moved over the typed lines on the page. It was the first thing that made any sense. Into her pocket it went. She picked up the wooden rosary in her palm and studied it. Her eyes traveled over the wood, worn smooth with age.

She stopped. There were two hardened bumps on her hand, one on the side of her thumb, and one on her index finger. She slipped the rosary into the pocket of the pajama pants and held her hand up in front of her face, tilting her head and squinting at it. The doctor watched her with curiosity. She turned her palm out to face him and stepped forward.

“Look,” she said. He grabbed her hand by the wrist and inspected it more closely.

“What - oh.” He frowned. “The calluses? Good catch. Probably from a gun.” She lowered the hand, still puzzling over it. A small smirk gathered at the corner of his mouth. “I guess you might be meaner than you look. You sure you ain't a soldier?” 

“No,” she said. “I’m a courier. I had a package to deliver.”

“I didn't find no package. They must have taken it off of you. Or it got lost somehow.” He turned around to rummage in the top drawer of a dark wooden chest behind him. She watched him as he pulled out what he had been looking for - a gun and a small box of bullets.

“Try this out.” He offered it to her. She reached out and grabbed it, pointing the muzzle away from him. She quickly pulled the slide back, ejected the magazine, checked that it was unloaded, then popped it back in to the well. It was like her hands moved on their own.

“So, you remember how to do that.” 

She looked over her shoulder. A pair of boots were pushed up against the wall next to the bed she had woken up in. She put the safety on the gun and put it in the pocket of the pajamas, then crossed the room and started putting the boots on. She bent over and her hair fell in her face as her hands pulled the laces tight.

“What are you -”

She tucked the ends of the baggy pajamas into the top of the boots and started for the hallway. When she passed the dresser, she plucked the box of ammo off the top.

“No, kid, look, you don't need to be walking around right now. Just relax -”

She turned down the hallway and made a line for the front door.

“Kid." His voice was gruff. She put her hand on the doorknob and pushed it open.

“Come back here when you're done,” his exasperated voice was at her back, “and don't point that thing at anyone who don't deserve it, you hear me?”

 

Later that night, after dark, they were sitting in his living room. He was at his desk peering through his spectacles and shuffling papers.

She was patching the beat-up leather armor she had gotten from a woman at the saloon. That woman chatted with her a while, then offered to take her out behind the building and show her how to shoot a rifle, despite her polite refusal. She couldn't convince the lady to leave her alone, so she reluctantly went with her. The woman eagerly lined up the soda bottles on a bench, and handed her a rifle - the type you would give a kid. 

She sighed and walked away from the woman. She walked all the way to the side of the house across the road, and kept walking.

“Hey!” The woman called, but she walked onward. Finally she turned around, put a bullet in the chamber, breathed, and hit one of the bottles. She did it twice more, walked back, and handed the rifle to the woman.

“I’m going now."

The other woman merely squeaked out an “okay!” towards her turned back as she walked away.

Everyone else had been friendly enough, but it was obvious they were scared of her. She couldn’t blame them, looking at herself through their point of view: a stony-faced visitor in oversized pajama pants, half-dead and hollow-eyed. That evening, it must have looked like death herself had walked into their little saloon.

 

“Do you know what retrograde amnesia means?” The doctor asked her. She looked up from her thoughts.

“No." He signed and put his paper down.

“If you break it down, it means amnesia, which is forgetting memories, and retrograde, which is “before a certain point.” Usually the point of trauma.” She just stared at him.

“That's your official diagnosis.”

“Okay.”

“I filled out a report for you. A medical chart.” He capped the pen and set it on the desk. The pity on his face was badly disguised. “You may regain some or all of your memories, eventually. You may not.” He held up the folder. “I’m going to save this here. If you're ever in this neck of the woods again, come back and see me and I'll give you a check-up.”

He sighed. “Look, kid, I don't really think it's ethically responsible and whatnot to send someone with severe head trauma out into the world alone, but I know you're itchin’ to leave and I sure as hell can't force you to stay.” He leaned forward. “But I just want t’ make one thing clear. You got serious problems. You may never recover your memory. You may get worse, even. I wouldn't be surprised if your functioning declined in a few weeks or months. Get to a doctor, if that happens. But, uh." He shook his head. "Just be careful out there, okay? It's a nasty world. Gettin’ worse every day, to tell you the truth.”

“I understand,” she said, her voice monotonous. He cleared his throat and nodded, picking up a sheet of paper and clipping it to the front of the stack.

“One last thing. I need a name to write on this.” She peered down at the folder. “Just pick something for yourself that you like. Something pretty, maybe.”

She remembered the delivery order. _Six of seven._

“Write ‘Courier Six’." She looked back down at her armor. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him start to protest.

“That ain’t a name. Certainly not one fit for a young lady.”

“It’s my name now."

His mouth opened, then he floundered.

“Fine. Courier Six." The pen scratched against the paper. He snapped the folder shut. “You are officially discharged from my care. I’m guessing by all the preparations - “ he gestured to the armor in her lap - “you’re plannin’ on leaving tomorrow morning?”

She nodded.

“I have a delivery to finish.”

“Well.” He looked almost rueful. “Goodbye, Courier Six. And good luck.”

  

To tell the truth, Six never believed luck had much to do with it. She kept her head down and worked hard. In each town and outpost, she snaked through the backdrop and tried not to draw too much attention to herself. Six quickly learned that the rest of the wasteland wasn't quite as altruistic as little old Goodsprings; it was more of a "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" type of system. That suited her just fine. She took just about every job she could find and did it quietly and professionally, and then got her payment or her information and moved on to the next town. Whenever she got discouraged or bored with a mundane task, she reminded herself that it was about stringing together all of the little victories into something bigger. Running errands and mediating people's problems wore her down, but slowly and surely, she was accumulating knowledge and money and supplies. She was getting back on her feet and helping other people get back on their feet, too. That might help her out in the long run.

She asked around about Benny, too - that part, she didn't try to hide. Information came to her in pieces, shared by newfound allies or wrenched out of untrusting opponents.

It felt like she never stopped asking questions. She needed to know everything - whose territory she was stepping foot on, who she needed to watch out for, where she could go for a little bit of shelter or medical care. Sometimes, she felt like a broken record with all the questions she asked, but even when she had nothing, she had a tiny, all-consuming drive: knowledge was power, and she passed her days collecting information like it was a precious resource.

When she approached the other members of her species, those aliens she was supposed to feel kindred to, she kept her face covered. Then, she slipped through their world unnoticed, and that was the only time she ever felt a flimsy pale comfort close enough to contentment that she might as well pretend it was so. Through the desert she pushed onward, a faceless impersonal traveler governed by nothing except what she and her gun deemed right.

Despite her single-minded determination, she took the scenic route to New Vegas. She meandered, taking her time, but always keeping her eyes on that guiding light. Through every night she spent out under the stars, and the rarer nights when her head rested on a pillow under a roof, there was one thing illuminating the path in front of her: Benny.

At towns with postal service, she would stop and scrawl out a message to him. Writing was difficult for her at first, and in the beginning, the messages were short.

From Primm: _Looking forward to our date. - Courier Six_ , with little hearts drawn over the i's.

Primm was the first and only time she broke down. That night, she finally finished sorting out the town's law and order problem. Six hoped Deputy Beagle would take the job, but instead the idiot took a bullet to the back of the head after he got distracted going through an old suitcase. Fine. She was never short on backup plans. After walking back and forth between the correctional facility and the Outpost all damn week, she finally negotiated a pardon for the would-be sheriff. He thanked her kindly and started clearing out the bodies of the fallen convicts.

Six went into the Mojave Express office and started looking around. Towering cabinets loomed above her. She opened the drawers and ransacked the files, hungry for anything they might tell her. It was mostly useless - she threw aside business expense reports and ledgers until her eyes glazed over. Then, her hand settled on a file that made her heartbeat quicken: PERSONNEL. Her fingers snatched it up and opened it, only to find it nearly empty. Most of the sheets had been torn out. Disappointment welled up in her chest, but she shoved it down. She threw the file down and started searching the counter.

Johnson Nash told her about the eyebot, but with everything else going on, she hadn't given it much thought. It lay on top of the counter on its side, decrepit and silent. She knew it was just a robot, but she could have sworn it looked lonely. Maybe she was going crazy like Doc Mitchell said.

She had recently scraped together enough caps to buy some repair tools, and she pulled the kit out of her bag and rolled it open along the counter. That was something else she knew how to do, apparently. So far, the list of things she could do totaled up to shooting guns and fixing things - mostly guns. She figured it out when she watched Major Knight unjam a pistol while they were talking. The feeling was utterly strange, like something had been knocked loose but was clicking back into place. She hadn't really begun to process what it was like to barely know anything. Nothing felt like real life. Her body still reacted to the world around her, probably as fast as it always did, but her mind felt like it was underwater, or like this was all some bizarre dream. The more she dwelled on it, the more lost she felt. She tried not to think about it at all.

Six hopped up onto the counter and crossed her legs in front of her. She leaned over the eyebot and tentatively started to run her hands around its components. This particular model was unfamiliar to her, but she figured with all of the junk she had collected and a couple hours, she might be able to get it up and running again. She pushed it gently over on its side, and she immediately saw the problem: two gaping holes where bullets had pierced its armor. They had gone in deep. The wiring was exposed, poking out through the jagged edges. She pulled it closer to her, nearly in her lap, and got to work, stopping only periodically to push the bandage on her head up.

 

Four hours passed, and the sun had set long ago, and she was getting nowhere. After removing the bullets (.308's - poor thing must have been taken down by a sniper), Six re-sealed his metal casing, rearranged some of the wiring, and even tried to jump his battery off from a generator she had lugged over from the casino, but she had no luck. Her tools and her scrap metal were haphazardly arranged in front of her, and she began trying different things more rapidly, unsure of what the problem was beyond the obvious bullet hole issue. She couldn't figure out exactly what systems were damaged. Was it purely electrical? Did he need a replacement frame?

She was starting to get frustrated. Her mind kept running over what must have happened to him. Maybe his previous owner had tried to fix him, but couldn't figure it out and had abandoned him. Maybe he had taken too much damage to be repaired, and this was all a waste of time. Her hands started moving more frantically over the tools, tightening a screw or soldering a wire, then throwing it back down on the counter and grabbing a new tool. She was breathing hard and fast, her pulse thumping in her ears. She picked up her needle-nose pliers and moved aside some of the wiring and dug into the main internal components -

She snapped the wire out of the circuit board. Her hands had been pressing too hard on the pliers, and she was too agitated, and she pulled it right out of its port. Six froze, staring at the loosened wire. Her hand threw the pliers across the room and the sound of breaking glass followed. Her breath was so fast now that it sounded like she just ran a mile. Her throat felt like it was closing up, and pressure built up in her head, and it felt like she was going to choke -

Six realized her face was wet and hot. Her breath was coming in big heaving sobs now, and she heard herself crying. She pushed the robot off of her lap and drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them.

Everything was so damn _hard_ for her. She didn't know why the fuck she was here, or where she came from, or if anyone was looking up at the stars tonight and wondering when she'd come back. She started with nothing, and what had she managed to scrape together since then? Weeks of effort, of walking nonstop for hours and hunger and thirst, of dealing with assholes, of fighting and bleeding, and all she had to show for it was more scars. In that moment, she felt truly and completely alone. She could cry and scream all she wanted, but no one was listening and no one would come to help her. She dug her forehead into her knees and pounded her fist against the wooden countertop, hard enough to make all of the metal tools jump. The pain in the side of her hand made her cry harder. Even the sound of her own sobbing was alien in her ears.

A sluggish beep stopped her. She looked up. The eyebot was still on his side, dead to the world. Now she was imagining things too. Panic began to rise in her chest. If she stopped being able to tell what was real, she might as well go finish the job and put a bullet in her own head.

Her spiral of frenzied thoughts was cut off by another beep, this one higher-pitched. The robot made a whirring noise and powered up. He struggled upwards, hovering a few unsteady inches off of the counter. She clasped her hands together.

"Hi," she said, sniffing back tears. The eyebot bounced up higher, and beeped back at her.

"I - uh, I'm Six." Another beep, this one longer yet.

"Someone shot you, but I got the bullets out. I don't know what went wrong, but I guess I fixed some of the damage. Anyway." She gestured to the door. "We're in Primm. In the Mojave Desert. So, what should I call you?" Three short beeps. She looked at the license plate on his side.

"ED-E?" Fuck her, maybe she was crazy, but he almost sounded happy when he beeped after that.

"Okay, ED-E it is. Uh…" she vigorously rubbed her face with the palms of her gloved hands. "Do you wanna come with me?"

The eyebot bobbed up and down.

"Well, I don't know if that's a yes, but, how about when I leave, if you want to come, you follow me, okay?" Six couldn't help but smile as he beeped again. She could feel the flush receding from her face. ED-E hovered around the room, examining his surroundings, then returned to her side. He wasn't a person, she knew, but it felt good to finally have someone - or something - watching her back.

The next morning, she pulled out a postcard from a stand next to the counter. It had a brightly colored picture of the Vikki and Vance death car on it. Six flipped it over and picked up a pen. She pressed it to the card, her tongue clamped between her teeth with concentration as she began to scrawl out her message. She didn't know the street address, but she just wrote "TO BENNY" and hoped she would learn enough to be able to eventually send it to the right place.

So, she set off on another long walk, but this time, she had company. She threw rocks and into the air and laughed as ED-E hit them with his lasers, his aim perfect every time. She told him about her thoughts and questions, and he beeped back at her. It was silly, but it almost seemed like he understood. It made her feel less alone.

  

As she went along, the messages got longer. She wanted Benny to know she was coming; to succumb to the terror creeping up on him, stronger and stronger with each postcard as she got closer. He was a rabbit caught in a trap with a hungry wolf approaching. She wanted him to feel completely and utterly helpless every single day for the rest of his rapidly shortening life. 

That was her conscious reasoning. That was the way it began, but after a while she started looking forward to writing the letters. She would include more detail, talking about the people she had met or what she had done that day. Her handwriting was getting more legible, too. It didn't take as much effort to write as it had in the beginning.

From Novac, on the back of a picture of Dinky the Dinosaur: _Hey, Benny, how's it going? I haven't heard back from you, but I bet you're busy. I know things have been crazy on my end. Caesar's Legion, boy, those guys are nuts. I've ran into a few of their scouting parties and raid camps. They don't look so tough when they're scattering like ants as I aim my rifle at their heads. Their brains explode just like anyone else's. Well, not mine, of course, despite your best efforts. I haven't been able to figure out how to stay dead yet. Lucky me._

_I met a couple men here who used to be in First Recon. One of them seems like an okay guy, but he's really torn up about his wife. She was taken by Caesar's Legion. I told him I'd help him sort some things out. He won't hardly talk to me, or anyone from what I hear. I hope I can at least give him some sense of closure to the situation. The other guy said he used to be a Great Khan._

_See you soon, Courier Six_

By the time she made it to Novac, her messages were the usual threats mixed in with her genuine thoughts. It started to feel like she was writing to a friend. That realization gave her pause, but she pushed it away. It was nothing. It could work to her advantage even, an added confusion to the mental game she was playing with him.

She still didn't know his address, but she learned he was in New Vegas, so she just wrote TO BENNY, but added NEW VEGAS on all of the cards she had already written. She found the postal box and dumped them all into it. There was no telling whether they'd ever make it to him or not, but she hoped more than anything that they would.

She started listening to the radio, and the first time the announcer mentioned her, she was stunned. Over time, as her mentions became more frequent, her response dulled to a muted amusement. She liked the music they played, too, and found herself drawn back to the love songs, although she'd never admit it. The crooning sincerities seemed so jarring as they wove around her into the nights in the wasteland, and she found herself repeating the words, letting them bounce around her empty head. It was all silliness of a bygone era, but she could study people through the artifacts they left behind; understand how they worked by the words they wanted each other to believe. Living in the graveyard of an old world was something of an advantage, if you knew what to look for when sifting through the bones and ash.

 

When she wrapped up the hostage situation in Boulder City, she caught the Great Khans on their way out. She was smoking a cigarette with the newly-released NCR soldiers when she saw the one who had been there when Benny shot her - Jessup. She ran after him.

"Hey." She threw her cigarette on the ground. "Let me ask you a question." Jessup stopped and looked her up and down, full of distrust, like she still might not be real. 

"Alright. Shoot." He answered, then lit his own cigarette, still eyeing her. 

She ground the cigarette into the road with her heel.

"How'd you do it?"

He narrowed his eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"How did you get me?" 

"I don't know what you're -"

Irritation flashed through her.

"The last time we met, buddy, what did you do to get me in front of my own grave? How did you capture me? Is that clear enough for you, or do I need to draw you a fucking picture to jog your memory?" She folded her arms. It was hard for her to talk about, to be honest. It gave her a sick feeling in her stomach and made the back of her mouth water, but she had to know. Recognition crossed his face.

"Oh." He seemed a little embarrassed. "Yeah, uh, well, we pretended to be friendly to get close to you, then we, uh…" he rubbed his hands together. "Uh, we just jumped on you, t' be honest. We knew we wouldn't get anywhere otherwise, with you'n that rifle." He threw her an almost apologetic look. "I mean, clearly you're no lightweight, but three guys in a fistfight? No way, José." He took a hard drag off of his cigarette, the end glowing bright orange in the fading light.

"Thanks," she said, and left.

 

The next day, Boone asked her what the contraption in her hand was. She rigged it up from some spare metal and wire she had found in the ruins, and had been squeezing it for the entirety of their walk out of Boulder City. It was difficult, but she hoped her grip would get better as time wore on. 

"Oh, nothing." She threw him a smile. "I learned about this thing people used to have in the old world called...stress balls?" She acted like she had just remembered the right term. "Anyway, people would carry them around and squeeze them. It's supposed to be good for you, I guess. I'm trying to get stronger."

It wasn't her best lie, but if Boone didn't believe her, he didn't say anything about it. He merely nodded. She didn't usually lie to him. He had seen her lie to other people countless times, but he never reacted. It's not like she had known the guy for very long, but his loyalty had been consistent thus far. He was really starting to grow on her.

From the Strip, on the reverse of a picture of the Lucky 38 Casino: _Hey Benny, great news! As you can probably tell, I'm in the neighborhood. I'll be stopping by any day now, I hope you're ready! My week has been okay so far. The NCR guys in Boulder City were pretty nice. You may have heard about that whole deal. That's all they've been talking about on the radio. Guess I'm getting famous!_

_Anyway, I didn't want to be rude and drop in without a warning. I'm looking forward to our date. It's been a long time coming. Love, Courier Six._

Boone and ED-E were there with her when she finally walked into the Tops. When she pictured that moment, it had always been just her, alone, but reality never played out quite the same way. She warned him that she might need some space, but he wanted to go with her for backup.

"Okay, but don't start shooting anyone unless I give the word. I'm trying to solve this..." she trailed off. "Diplomatically, if possible." He looked displeased, but nodded his agreement anyway. Six hadn't told him too much about her situation, but she figured that the surly way she changed the radio station every time Mr. New Vegas started reporting on the "package courier recently found shot in the head" told him enough. He knew what she was here to do, and she thought he was almost pissed off on her behalf. That was his loyalty rearing its head again. She supposed she'd helped him get his own revenge back in Novac, and he was going to repay the favor. She turned to the robot floating behind them.

"Hey, ED-E," she said, shaking her finger and enunciating her words."No shooting." He gave a disappointed little beep. She put her hands on her hips. "I said no, you bloodthirsty little rascal. It's important, please." Once she was satisfied that his beeps were sufficiently compliant, they set off for the front doors of the casino. She removed her ranger helmet. She wanted him to see her face. 

Benny was horrified. Six couldn't really blame him - he finally saw the ghost that had been haunting him for over half a year. Six let herself relish his terror a little before she got down to business.

"How did you - I thought," his mouth was agape as he looked her up and down. "How the hell did you find me here?"

"I'm persistent."

"That's one word for it. Jesus."

If she thought he was surprised when she first stepped to him, the way he looked at her during the latter half of their conversation was something new entirely as she dropped her voice lower, batting her eyelashes, patiently spinning her web.

"Did that bullet completely scramble your egg?" His eyes bugged out when she put her hand on his knee. She laughed, low, and leaned toward him. She told Boone to stay behind with ED-E on the casino floor, but she could see him in her peripheral vision. He was standing in the corner, sunglasses hiding his eyes, the vein on the side of his forehead bulging. Six figured he couldn't quite hear what she and Benny were saying, but her body language was clear enough. Boone looked utterly perplexed, and, she guessed, was starting to get angry. She silently begged him to stay calm and hoped that he trusted her enough to let her do her thing.

Six turned back to Benny, talking lower, getting closer. She leaned up to him and whispered another meaningless come-on in his ear, maybe copied from some song she'd heard on the radio. It worked. His face turned red.

"Okay - god," he sputtered. "Tell you the truth, I did think you were kind of cute the first time we met, but y'know - clearly the timing was inappropriate, so I, uh - Jesus." He was tripping over his words. "This is just so wrong. Here," he fumbled a key out of his pocket, and leaned in, whispering. "Meet me in the presidential suite. Thirteenth floor." His hands were shaking as he pressed it into her palm. Her hands were steady.

She was waiting for him when the doors finally opened. It appeared he calmed himself down a little. As she watched him run his hands through his dark hair, it occurred to her that he really was sort of handsome. Maybe in another life, she would have gone up to his room for reasons other than just business. They talked for a few minutes, and Six tried to stay as nonchalant as possible.

"Sorry about that black eye you must have had," he said, glum. "The Khans were roughing you up and I told 'em to cut that shit out, but y'know. They're animals, baby, just no class at all."

"Don't worry about any of that," she purred, sitting down on the edge of the table. "Let bygones be bygones."

"You're incredible," he said, one eyebrow raised. "I don't get it, to be honest. After all I put you through, you just...forgive me?"

"Yep." She gave him a sly smile. "What can I say? I'm a forgiving sort of girl." She tilted her head toward a postcard sitting on the table. It was the most recent one she sent. "So, you got my messages?" 

"Oh, yeah." He looked sheepish. "Those postcards. I saved them all." He gestured toward the dresser in the corner. "Scared the shit out of me, to be honest, baby. It was kinda creepy, y'know? I thought you were coming to kill me, or something crazy like that." He laughed a little too hard. "If I had known you meant an actual date, I woulda got flowers or something." His hands fidgeted. The terror was still in his eyes. He was afraid of her. He knew better than to do what he was about to do.

She jumped onto his bed and gave him a look she knew was inviting. Benny hesitated, his mental conflict playing out on his face. Six suspected he was weak, that he would eagerly take the bait. She laid out the breadcrumbs and played her part too well for him to stop now. The quick succession of resignation and excitement that crossed his face told her she guessed correctly.

"Fuck. You're crazy." He crawled onto the bed, and she wound a fist around his tie and yanked him closer. "Let's go, baby."

 

Later, long after night had fallen and they had pulled apart from each other, she heard his breathing start to get deeper and slower. He'd asked her to hold him, his voice half-slurred with exhaustiom, and she hesitantly wrapped an arm around his side as he drifted off to sleep against her chest. The soft glow of the moonlight through the windowpane threw patterns of shadow on the ceiling, moving and twinkling with the lights of the Strip outside. There was a gray stain on the left corner of the ceiling that looked like fire damage that someone tried to paint over. She noticed it while they were having sex, and for some reason, it was hard to stop staring at it.

Benny let out a snore that told her he was fully asleep. She rolled over on top of him, straddling him. His eyes barely fluttered open, but his hands swept up her thighs.

"You ready for round two, already, pussycat? Damn," he smiled, tired and soft. "You are wild _."_

He rubbed his thumbs in lazy circles on the skin where her upper thighs met her hips. The intimacy of the gesture was startling, and Six peered down at him. The moonlight lit up his face in shades of blue. She looked around at the white bedsheets, cast blue and tangled between them. He was still smiling at her as if she actually meant something to him. It made some sense, in a way. She had thought about him every night before she fell asleep. He knew more of the thoughts that crossed her mind than anyone else, scrawled to him in a childlike hand from across the desert. All of this, everything she had done, had been to get to him. His hands still stroked her skin. She leaned over him further. He gave a pleased little moan, his eyes still not fully open. He really did know her, or whoever she was now. He really did.

She trapped his hands underneath her kneecaps and put her hands around his throat and squeezed. His eyes flew open all the way, frantic, staring straight into her.

"Baby - "

Her hands tightened around his neck, pressing the part between her thumb and index finger against his trachea. It crunched beneath her palms. She threw her body weight forward and squeezed her hands harder, digging her knees into the bed. The look in his eyes was pure disbelief. It pleased her to know that he hadn't seen this coming, that he'd underestimated the monster he created so severely. He was struggling against her, pathetic, throwing his body from side to side, but his hands were trapped. It was too late, and they both knew it.

She tightened her grip on the sides. _That's where the arteries are,_ she reminded herself. Everything had that familiar detached dreamlike quality. She watched him thrash as one might watch a bug they had stomped on. His eyes rolled back so far she could see the whites, blinding in the moonlight. He opened his mouth, and a sickly gurgling came out. His tongue flailed and spit flew everywhere. Her hands tightened. They were blue. His face was blue, too, and red around his eyes where the tears were leaking out. He lost consciousness quickly, but she stayed on top of him with her hands clamped around his neck for a long time after that. She was going to make sure the job was done. That was the difference between them.

Everything was still. The only sound was her own breath. A sense of calm overcame her, but then unease tugged at the bottom of her stomach. After all of her preparation, the execution had been too easy, like meticulously sharpening a steak knife to slice through a stick of butter.

_Is this how it's supposed to feel?_

When she was sure that there was no life left in him, she lifted her hands. Ugly purple bruises dappled his skin. There were saliva and tears everywhere, and the ammonia smell of piss lingered in the air. The reality of it all hit her like a wave. With distaste, she pushed herself off of him and walked over to the bathroom. She slid the bandage up off of her forehead and pulled her hair through it, then bent down to wash her face in the sink. Once the cool water cut through her mechanical focus, she looked up and stared at herself in the mirror.

If she examined her own face, maybe she could work from the outside in and figure out how she really felt about it all. She tilted her head at the stranger in the mirror, and an answer came to her. Maybe this was what satisfaction felt like. It should have been, at the very least. Was the set of her jaw triumphant? Was that contentment she could make out in her own eyes? 

It was best to bury her worries, anyway. This was supposed to be everything she was working toward. If it was taken away, what was she left with?

More questions, but never any answers. Her eyes traveled up to her forehead. The mark near her temple had mostly healed into scar tissue, and wasn't reopened and leaking blood like it sometimes did after moving around a lot. It was time to stop wearing the bandage. She washed her hands, then threw it in the trash.

One more day and one more job over. The sick feeling lingered in her stomach, and she carried it with her on her way out the door. 


	7. VII

"Here."

Joshua looked up as the courier set a fabric sack on his table. "Everything's in there." She turned to leave, then paused. "Follows-Chalk did a good job."

She was wearing different armor - still too big for her frame, but better-fitting than what she'd arrived in. Her voice sounded tired and thin. There was red dirt all over her, especially caked onto her knees and forearms. It was agreed that she would assist them, of course, but she had been out working in the canyon almost every day, non-stop. She was giving far more effort than Joshua had expected.

"Thank you. I'll pass that along to the scouts. And something else." He tapped his fingers on the table. "You should meet Daniel. I'm sure he could use your help. You and Follows-Chalk have done just about all you can here. I'm walking over to the Sorrows camp tomorrow evening, and you are welcome to come with me, if you'd like."

"Okay." Even through the combat armor, he could tell her shoulders were slumped. The dullness in her tone surprised him. 

"Courier Six," he said, not quite sure what he was doing. "Are you feeling all right?" Perhaps she was sick. _She's no help to anyone in that state._ He reassured himself that it was reasonable of him to ask. After leading the Dead Horses for some time, it was easy to tell when one of his men needed something. He'd always been that way, even back in the Legion. It was never a matter of personal concern - he was well-known as the coldest of the commanders, never encouraging any kind of familiarity like some of the others. When he looked at his soldiers, it was with the cold-eyed gaze of a mechanic appraising his tools and components - function and efficiency above all else. He pulled away from that thought as she began to speak.

"I have to ask you for a favor." The words came tumbling out, as if she had been holding them back. She didn't sound particularly pleased about whatever situation she was in.

"Of course," he said. _Curious._

"We were out in the canyon and I found something. It's not far away, but I don't think anyone else knows about it. I need some help taking care of it."

Before he thought carefully about it, some strange feeling tensed in his chest, compelling him forward.

"I'll assist you." 

"Thank you." She looked down and nudged a rock with her boot. "Do you have a shovel?"

"Yes."

She nodded, and he could hear her breath echoing from inside the helmet.

"Okay. We should go early in the morning. Before the sun rises."

"Fine."

He had no idea what he just agreed to do, and his suspicions about her still lingered, but the fact that she was willing to ask him for help meant it must be important.

 

 

The next morning, he woke up before sunrise like he always did. Sleep was difficult for him. If he found a position that didn't cause him too much discomfort, it was only a matter of time before it would start to hurt. Sleeping through the entire night was usually out of the question.

He drew water from the spring that ran through the cave and placed the bucket on the table in front of him. A fresh roll of fabric bandages and a pair of medical scissors were already on the table from yesterday. His hands found the top button on his shirt. Methodically, he undid it and each one that followed. There were many things in his life that he had rushed through without truly thinking, but he tried to take his time and focus when he did this. It became a ritual for him, comforting in its familiar sorrow.

This morning, his mind was burdened. It was never easy, of course, but some days were worse than others. The shirt opened, and he shrugged it off his shoulders and pulled his arms through the sleeves. That part always hurt. He hadn't found a way to avoid it. He folded the white shirt and placed it on the table. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the bandages around his fingers free and unwound them. Smooth white fabric gradually gave way to scarred skin. It sent a stabbing pain through his body. He flexed his hand and pulled his fingers into a fist. His hands were prone to getting stiff if he didn't move them often. He was blessed beyond measure that the medics at New Canaan had made him stretch continually while his skin was still healing. If not for them, the scarring on his hands might have contorted them permanently. It would have been impossible for him to hold a gun, or dress himself, or read...

A familiar wave of gratitude washed over him, swiftly accompanied by its more sinister partner: guilt. His people had done everything they could for him, especially in those first few months when he could hardly do anything except lay in bed and suffer. They didn't just attend to his physical injuries. Members of the community stopped by and brought him books, food, conversation - anything to keep his mind occupied. His own parents had passed away while he was gone, which in a twisted way brought him some small comfort that they were with God and never had to see with their own eyes what he had become. It would have torn them apart. Knowing them, they would have blamed themselves. He wished he was there to help them in the end, but he knew the other New Canaanites had supported them like they supported him when he returned. He hadn't realized it at the time, but later, when he was able to think more clearly, the community's grace and charity overwhelmed him.

Thinking about New Canaan always brought him grief, but he bore a responsibility to them. Banishing them from his memory because it hurt would be a disservice after all they had done. He already failed them in so many ways.

He pulled the bandages off of his upper arm, then his shoulder. The fabric pulling away felt like his own outer layer of skin was being torn off. He clamped his mouth shut so he wouldn't make any noise. He took the scissors off the table and snipped the loose bandages off. _Now, the face..._ His fingers slipped under the top layer of bandages on his cheek, and he worked one edge of the scissors underneath and cut through them. The white fabric fell in ribbons. One at a time, he took a loose end between his fingers and pulled it away slowly. He worked until only the bottom layer touching his skin was left. He steeled himself, then pulled one loose. It was agony. His entire face flushed hot with pain. Water welled up in his eyes, but he pulled the bandages off with determination, not rushing himself. When the torment built so white hot that he felt his mind go blank, he forced himself back to reality with another tug at a bandage on his neck. _Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap._

The last of the bandages around his head fell away, and he cut them off. He moved on to the bandages on his chest. Most of the pitch had ended up on his shoulders and torso, and the scarring was worst here. Other than his hands, it was the first part of his body he saw when he opened his eyes in New Canaan. He still remembered how his stomach turned with horror. The feeling would never go away, but he became accustomed to his own body. Time had a way of dulling even the worst monstrosities into a mundane reality. Despite that, he always made sure he covered his skin around other people. It was less frightening for them.

He stood up and undid his belt, then his pants, and pushed them off. His legs didn't hurt as terribly as his face and arms and chest did, but as he unwound the bandages from his thigh, the ache still made him nearly bite down on his own tongue. As he stared at the white fabric, it occurred to him that he had become somewhat of an expert on pain. He had experienced and inflicted nearly every kind, in every degree, ranging from mere annoyance to worse than dying.

The scissors slid under the bandages at his knees, and he sliced them off in one fluid motion. He thought about the courier's dirt-coated knees last night, when she had come into the back chamber of the cavern. It had to be from lying down for long-range shooting. He knew she had a hunting rifle, but he ought to ask her if she had a sniper rifle as well. No one else here was proficient with them. He had a terrible feeling in his stomach that things with the White Legs were about to get much worse, and they needed all the help they could get.

_These problems are not hers. She doesn't need to be involved any further._

That was true. They made a deal, but signing on for a war was not part of it. Joshua was committed to staying true to his word. Once she finished with Daniel, she was free to leave. It would be better for her if she did.

He wrapped the new bandages up his leg. There were a hundred things he needed to do today - convene with the scouts, check the camp's defenses, probably lead another group out to patrol the canyon - perhaps to make a preemptive strike on any scouts they found. He certainly wasn't going to wait for the White Legs to come to them. After all of that work, he still had to make it to the Sorrows camp by nightfall to meet with Daniel.

But first, he was going to help the courier. He promised her he would.


	8. XIII

Joshua left while the sky was still dark, two shovels in his hands. He trudged past the sleeping people, careful not to wake them. The courier's bedroll was empty, so she must have risen earlier than she usually did. With annoyance, he'd noted she often slept well into the late morning - youthful folly, staying up all night and wasting the early sunlight, but he had a feeling she wouldn't be receptive to his comments on the matter. The sky over Zion was a deep blue, and the mountains seemed to stretch all the way up to the glittering stars. _God's splendor, visible for us all,_ he thought. _We must do whatever it takes to protect it._

He saw her silhouette, black against the sky. She sat on a cliff face, her legs dangling off of the edge. She was lazily tossing a rock into the air and catching it, not even bothering to turn around as he came to stand next to her.

"You're awake. Are you ready?" She looked over her shoulder and he stared into the impenetrable green eye panels of her helmet. Her hand slipped the rock deftly into her pocket. Joshua handed her one of the shovels as she rose to her feet.

"Yep. Let's go. There might be some hostiles running around out here, so be careful."

It caught him off guard that she would try to give him such an unnecessary warning, as if he needed any help defending himself. He might have commented on her arrogance if he hadn't been so confused. She always assumed an equivalence between them - rather bold, for a newcomer to his territory.

They walked in silence for about thirty minutes. Her rifle bounced against her back as she walked slightly ahead of him, maneuvering around crumbled rocks and pitfalls with ease. He got a clear look at the gun for the first time. It was dark wood - old and plain, but sturdy. According to Follows-Chalk, she was a skilled shot. _She must be, to have survived this long._

The young scout had taken a liking to her, apparently. In the camp, she was often right behind him like a shadow, and rarely with anyone else. Despite the confidence she'd thrown in Joshua's face, she was generally quiet, preferring solitude to any company. He asked some of the Dead Horses what they thought of her, but most of them had nothing to say. As a visitor, she'd been compliant enough with his requests, but he found it suspicious that she kept to herself so much. 

She took several sharp turns off of the more worn-down trails until they were ascending a steep ridge. It was unfamiliar to him. The vegetation grew more sparse as they ascended higher into the mountains. Although she was walking ahead of him, she was keeping him in her peripheral vision, like he was some kind of beast that couldn't be trusted not to attack if she turned around for too long. 

An unsettling feeling descended upon him. He still had no idea why she asked him to come out here with her. Clearly she disliked him- hated him, even - but he hadn't yet seriously considered the possibility that she might try to harm him. He scanned her up and down. There wasn't anything specific that made him feel uneasy aside from his intuition. Besides, she posed no real threat. He'd killed much more formidable opponents than her, more than he'd ever be able to count.

She stopped, then lifted her head up toward an intimidatingly sheer rock projection.

"Here."

They had to wind their way up through the narrow footpath. At a few points, the trail grew so steep that they were forced to use their arms to help pull themselves up. Joshua worked his fingers into a groove in the red rock. The skin on his body seared as he pushed himself up. He looked around and saw that the rocks flattened out. 

An array of bones lay in front of them, bleached white and dry by the sun. They appeared to be human. The courier put the head of the shovel onto the rock in front of them.

"This is it."

So, he was attending a burial. It wasn't what he had expected, at all, but he relaxed a little.

"The dirt here is thin. Let's find a more suitable area to dig." Joshua turned to look around them.

"Okay. I'd like it to be close to here, if possible."

They split up, testing various areas with the ends of their shovels, walking past each other without speaking. Joshua finally found an area with enough worn-down sediment to dig a proper hole.

"Here." He plunged the head of the shovel into the ground. The skin on his shoulders and back tugged and throbbed.

The courier joined him and lifted away a shovelful of dirt.

"Good eye." She dumped the dirt to their side.

That was the last thing she said to him for some time. Because all that was left of the body was bones, they didn't need to dig a very large hole, but the hard-packed earth slowed them considerably. The only time she stopped was when the sun rose above them, tinging the sky pink and yellow. The courier wedged the shovel in the ground and tilted her head up. Joshua stopped as well, watching her. She kept still and stared patiently at the clouds blooming with new color.

 _This is utterly strange,_  he thought, as the golden morning light began to filter around them. The Mojave wasteland was harsh and dangerous, and many groups and tribes had abandoned some traditional customs over the years. People like her did not usually expend time and energy on burials. They certainly never did in the Legion.

They moved the bones to the pit and covered them with dirt, packing it in with the flat part of their shovels. She knelt down and pulled the smooth stone out of her pocket and placed it at the top of the grave. She stayed down on her heels. 

"Do you have anything to say?" She straightened up and rubbed the dirt off of her gloves. "I don't really know what you're supposed to say for this."

Unfortunately, he had been to many funerals in his life. _Too many._

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters." She stood up and walked to his side. Joshua continued reciting the psalm as she rested her hands on the handle of the shovel. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

They stood there for another moment. Joshua wished he had the slightest idea what she was thinking. There was no telling who this person had been, but from the state of the bones, it appeared they had died long ago. The courier couldn't have possibly known the person in the grave. He watched the line of her shoulders fall as she looked down at the freshly-upturned dirt.

"Thanks." 

"Of course." He matched her somber tone.

They collected their shovels and started back down towards the camp. They could have passed the whole walk back in silence, and Joshua suspected that's what she would have preferred, but he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that followed him down the canyon.

"May I ask you a question?" He broke the silence. She threw him a glance over her shoulder as she picked through a rocky part of the footpath.

"Sure."

"Do you believe in an afterlife?" For a split-second, she said nothing, and he thought she wasn't going to respond.

"No."

"Do you believe in God?"

"No."

He closed the distance between them, and was almost next to her.

"Do your people bury their dead?"

She whipped around and stared at him.

"Why are you talking to me right now? How is this any of your business?" The frigidity in her voice took him aback. It was a calculated hostility, an attempt to make him halt in his tracks. He bit back his impulse to be antagonistic.

"Forgive me." He put on his most civil tone. "Let me start over. Why did you want to bury those bones?" She turned toward him again, more slowly this time.

"I...I just think he deserved someone to pay their final respects to him." Her voice still had a residual edge of defiance, but Joshua could tell it was melting away. "I don't know. It doesn't really matter, I guess, 'cause he's dead. But leaving someone alone like that just doesn't seem right." He realized she was being genuine. _For some reason, it does matter to her._

"Who was he?" They resumed walking, this time side by side.

"He was a survivor of the war," she admitted. "He was here when the bombs fell and destroyed everything - everything he knew. Everyone he loved." She looked down. "He left behind some journal entries. I found them." Joshua couldn't believe what she was saying.

"That's the truth?"

She nodded. That meant the man they had buried had passed away around two hundred years ago, and only now was his body being laid to rest. _Two hundred years later, and she feels connected to a man she never knew but in death._ Joshua had spent a good deal of time thinking about people's capacity for evil. It fascinated him, it sickened him, it brought him a burden of grief that never seemed to lighten. But the things that tied people together: family, community, burials - even for unknown strangers - gave him a flicker of hope. _God gives us the ability to keep caring for each other, even after destruction._ He said a silent prayer of gratitude for that, and felt a little lighter. The days he managed to feel thankful were the best ones in his life.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, but he stayed at her side. After a few more minutes, the entrance to the camp came into view. Some of the Dead Horses were already awake, and they waved to Joshua as they went about their tasks. The courier turned around to face him.

"Uh," she began, "thank you for helping me." He nodded dutifully.

"The pleasure is mine. Don't hesitate to ask in the future." The words came to him out of courtesy, but as he looked down at her, he realized he meant it.

"Well, okay," she nodded. "I'll see you later, then?"

"Yes. I would like to arrive at the Sorrows camp before sundown. It's a few hours away. I'll come get you this afternoon."

"You know where to find me."

"I do."

They stood there a second longer than necessary. Finally, she turned away. Joshua watched her walk up toward the camp. When she reached the entrance, she looked over her shoulder at him. He met her eyes, and her unnaturally sudden pivot away told him that she wasn't expecting him to still be staring at her. That couldn't help but amuse him slightly. He put his hands in his pockets and watched her disappear into the camp. They still had several hours before they departed again, and everything he had left to do nagged at him. For just a precious moment, though, one that he promised himself he wouldn't forget, it all washed away like a gentle wave rolling over him.


	9. IX

Working alone came naturally to Six. In the Mojave, she frequently went days without speaking to anyone. Sometimes those days turned into weeks, and it never bothered her one way or the other.

However, there was something refreshing about working with a partner sometimes. She hadn't been quite sure of her decision when she first asked Boone to travel with her, but after a few days on the road, she couldn't have been more pleased. The two often went hours without speaking, but it was an amicable silence. Their tactics meshed well, too. They could lie in a covered position for hours, barely moving a muscle. He even let her try out his sniper rifle sometimes, which she thought must be his ultimate stamp of approval. Boone would look down the spotter scope and mumble advice to her, so quiet it may as well have been messages from her own subconscious. _Wind's blowing 3 miles per hour, southeast. Our target is 850 meters away._ Once they'd lined everything up, she'd pull the trigger and he'd track the shot for her.

"Huh," he said, hardly changing his facial expression. "He's down. You sure you've never done this before?"

"No," she said, chambering another round. He'd raise his eyebrows, but never ask. He was good in that way.

They might spend another three or four hours like that, breaking the silence only to assist each other. It was helpful - having good backup was a welcome change - but it was also enjoyable. There was something satisfying about working with someone else who could match her.

As she should have expected by now, Joshua Graham was entirely different from anyone or anything else she knew. She learned that lesson quite abruptly on their way to the Sorrows camp.

"Fuck!" She barely had time to hiss the word out as she ducked behind a boulder. Graham crouched beside her. Their backs pressed against the rock, their chests rising and falling with turbulent breaths. They were on a previously-quiet stretch of the trail that led to the north part of Zion Canyon. The White Legs' bullets were currently whizzing past their heads and striking the red dirt that rose around them in angry clouds. 

"We walked into a scouting party." Graham didn't look up from loading bullets into the magazine of his pistol.

"Stay down. We need to fall back and try to get a hit on them from a distance. We should - hey!"

Graham turned around the rock and fired off more shots. Six heard yelling and gunfire.

"What did I just say? This is not a good idea." She waved her hand with indignation.

"One down." He sounded almost smug.

"No -"

He jolted away from their cover and started firing on the White Legs. Six took a deep breath and grabbed her sidearm.  _Jesus Christ._ She leaned out from behind the boulder and aimed at one of the scouts up on the ledge. Fortunately, he didn't see her yet. He was focused on trying to hit Graham. Her breath and body stilled, and she pulled the trigger. The man howled in pain as he fell down the side of the ravine. She ducked back around. Another spray of bullets flew past her position. She could feel the thrum of the air hitting her ears. 

_This man is balls-to-the-wall crazy._

She heard him still firing, so he must be alive, at least. Her fingers tightened on the grip of her pistol. _I really might regret this._

She jumped back around the front of the boulder. Graham had taken down two of the White Legs already. The last one saw her and went to fire, but she looked down her sights and pulled the trigger first. A spray of red burst from his side. _He's done for._ Graham's bullet hit him in the head a split second after hers, and he tumbled backwards.

 _Goddamn, what a headshot._ That kind of accuracy with a pistol from such a distance was impressive. She turned to congratulate him, then stopped herself, sourness descending on her. _I'm supposed to be mad about this._ He holstered his gun.

"That was fast." He gestured toward the ridge with what seemed like surprise.

"I think that's all of them. Let's go double-check."

They started walking toward the ridge. Six would normally wait, but during her time here she had noticed that what the White Legs had in firepower and numbers, they lacked in tactics. They tended to all immediately charge and reveal themselves rather than wait and hide. She turned to Graham as they started up the side of the ridge.

"So, thanks for getting my heart rate up, I guess, but damn. Do you always just run in like that?"

He paused for a split second.

"Yes."

"Okay, well, I don't."

"You did well."

She rolled her eyes at that.

"Yeah, I know, but we could do better." She began to ascend the side of the ledge. "Like, a little more planning is all I'm asking for." At his puzzled expression, she sighed and turned around.

Most of the bodies had fallen off the ledge and weren't easily retrievable, but one was still on top of the rocks. Six knelt down and began to rummage through the man's bag. She felt the side of a small leather bag. The contents were cylinder-shaped and clinked together when she moved them.

"Bullets, that's good." She opened the bag and saw they were .45's. That was the caliber Graham shot. "Merry Christmas." She tossed the bag up at him and he caught it with little effort. "There's not much else."

"Let's keep moving, then." He looked over his shoulder. "We don't want to be caught out here after dark."

Six put on her best no-nonsense face as they descended back down to the trail. Graham walked a few feet in front of her. She stared at his back. Her thoughts kept running back to him firing on the White Legs with no fear, no hesitation. _He's good. As good as me. Maybe better. We could really work well together, if we figure our shit out_. She knew it was a bad idea, because it was _him,_  and it's not even like they'd ever be working together again. Despite that, her mind was already turning with strategies the two of them could use. It was hard to set the idea aside.

She tried to think of reasons why she should leave him alone and interact with him as minimally as possible. _He's not your friend, not your ally, and certainly not your partner. He's dangerous. Leave him alone,_ she chanted at herself.

"What is it?"

Six stopped, startled, as he threw her a look over his shoulder. Her apparent vulnerability to him made her want to shiver. She took a deep breath. _Fuck it._

They worked it out on the rest of the walk to the Sorrows camp. No matter how much she tried to persuade him, he wouldn't agree to her plan to move stealthily and wait. Then again, his passionate argument in favor of aggressive frontal assault didn't convince her, either. She knew better than to go anywhere near an angry man wielding a shishkebab. The White Legs didn't appear to be in short supply of them.

After around thirty minutes of arguing, their final plan was a sort of compromise.

"So, you'll take point," Six said, taking larger strides to keep up with Graham, "and engage. Like you were going to do anyway." He shot her a look of irritation.

"And you'll hang back and pick them off from afar," his voiced lowered, "like you were going to do anyway."

"Fine." She waved her hand. "Point taken. But I think maybe if you draw their fire, I could manage to stay hidden. And if they see me, we'll switch positions and you can watch my back." He looked back down at her, his blue eyes narrowing. She could practically see his mind turning, trying to think of a reason to say no. A sigh escaped him.

"Fine. I think we can make it work."

Six was satisfied with that.

"Here's to not having to find out anytime soon."


	10. X

Fortunately, the shootout with the White Legs ended much better than it could have. Joshua noticed that beautiful pistol on the courier's hip before, but today she put it to good use. He was so used to protecting other people that it almost felt strange to have someone at his side who could keep up.

After they took care of the White Legs, the courier's behavior toward him seemed to thaw slightly.  _She likes this,_ he realized, as she explained the problem West New Vegas was having with a gang called the Fiends. It was the most words he'd ever heard her voluntarily say at one time. _She must miss the Mojave._ Compared to the wasteland, Zion must be boring. Many people might find that strange, but he could understand it. Some people relaxed only when they were in the thick of trouble.

"Hey." She stopped and pointed up. Joshua followed her gaze to a ranger station a little ways up the hill. "Wanna check it out?"

It was imperative that they get to the Narrows before nightfall, and the brush with the White Legs set them back on time. She tilted her head, as if she knew what he was thinking.

"Come on, it won't take long. We might find something useful." She was already walking up toward the bluff. He knew that he should have said no, but he followed her anyway.

The door creaked open when she pushed it. _No lock._ He stepped forward around her. There was no sound but the wooden floorboards groaning. The courier's hand flew out in front of him, striking him hard in the chest. It hurt, even with the bulletproof vest on. The force stopped him in his tracks, and her hand stayed on him, holding him back. He reeled toward her, his temper flaring with the pain.

"Look," she whispered. The fury inside him ebbed as he strained to see what she was staring at. "Duck your head a little. You're too tall." He lowered his head slightly, then he saw it - a silvery thin wire stretched out in front of the hallway, revealed by a single beam of sunlight filtering in through the window at the right angle. Spotting the trap was an observant catch - one he might have blown right past, he grudgingly admitted to himself. "Lucky for you, I'm here."

He looked back down at her.

"Diligence is a virtue, but so is humility."

"Guess I need more practice on that one." He couldn't see her face underneath the helmet, but he thought he might have heard a smile in her voice. She tilted her head down and abruptly pulled her hand off of his chest, as if she'd forgotten it was there. With deliberate movements, she turned away toward the tripwire and leaned over to inspect it.

"It's simple. I can just cut it." She pulled a hunting knife off of her hip, then paused with the blade over the wire. "Uh, you should move to the side. Just in case." He did, pressing his back against the wall of the entryway even though it was uncomfortable. She leaned over further, then sliced the wire in a smooth motion.

"Well, we're still alive." She beckoned to him. "Come this way. Just keep an eye out." He followed her, making sure he stepped in places she already walked.

The gift shop had a few useful supplies. She picked over the medical kit in the back while he rummaged through the shelving behind the counter. Several boxes of matches, a small sewing kit, a stack of maps - he lifted the maps out, and stopped. A few packets of instant coffee lay at the bottom of the drawer. He glanced up at the courier. She was sitting on the floor with the contents of the medical kit strewn around her. A loose roll of bandages spilled out from the kit and lay tangled across her lap. She was thoroughly distracted with trying to untangle them.

"Goddamnit," she muttered.

He pocketed the coffee, and put the rest of the supplies into the bag they brought. Collecting it was merely a polite gesture - showing hospitality to visitors was pleasing to the Lord - so he questioned himself as to why he didn't get her attention and hand it to her right away. The lack of a ready answer set him on an uncomfortable edge.

After they finished searching the station, they got back on the road, passing the rest of the journey with far fewer words than before. Once they finally saw the circle of torches marking the direction toward the entrance of the camp, he knew they'd arrived. The Sorrows were crowded together around the fires, talking with one another. Joshua saw Daniel standing at the edge of the group, and he raised his hand to catch his attention.

"Joshua," Daniel waved. "It's good to see you. How have you been?" The other man moved toward him, the smile growing on his face. Daniel always looked like he was about to shake his hand or hug him, but had stopped himself short at the last minute.

"Hello." Joshua closed the distance between them. "I'm fine. How are things here?" More of the Sorrows began to crowd around them. Joshua nodded to several of them that he knew.

"Oh, I can't complain." His good-natured tone seemed out of place. Things weren't fine, and they both knew it. "How are the Dead Horses?"

Joshua paused. He decided to be blunt. It was what came most naturally to him.

"I need to discuss our situation with you later tonight." Daniel was still smiling, but it turned uneasy.

"Sure, sure. Of course we can." His gaze shifted past Joshua. "And who is this?" Joshua turned to see the courier was still standing several feet behind him.

"Ah, yes. This is Courier Six." He gestured to the woman, who gave a half-hearted wave back. "She found her way into Zion, and has agreed to help us while she's here. She and Follows-Chalk have been gathering supplies." Daniel gave her a mannerly smile.

"Oh, right. I should have known. Waking Cloud told me about your caravan. I'm sorry about that, by the way. My condolences. I know the circumstances that brought you here were sad, but it's nice to meet you." He reached his hand out toward her. "And thank you for your help." She removed her glove and shook his hand.

"It's no trouble at all. Everyone's been so hospitable, the least I could do is pay back the favor." She moved her hand like she was going to bite the side of her thumb, but stopped herself. _She's nervous,_ Joshua realized. It seemed uncharacteristic for her. Most people tended to naturally defer to him, but she was different. When they were together, she assumed an equivalence between them. For a newcomer to his territory, that was rather bold. _But here, suddenly, she's anxious._

"So, where are you from?" 

"I live in New Vegas," she responded. Joshua felt himself frown.  _That's not what he asked._

"Wow, not from around here. From what I've heard, this place is pretty different from the Mojave." Daniel may not have noticed how she dodged his question, but Joshua certainly did. He looked at her, and felt his eyes narrowing. Today had gone well enough - so well, in fact, that he had been slipping. _Just because her company is tolerable does not mean she is trustworthy._ Many long, regretful years had taught him that lesson well enough. _Hand her off to Daniel, and be done with it._

"I told her that you had tasks you need help with," Joshua broke into their conversation, "and she's offered to provide assistance." Daniel looked back and forth between them.

"Yes, yes. I do. That would be great. We can talk about it tomorrow, maybe. It's getting late. Are you hungry?"

They followed him to the largest fire that burned in the center of the camp. Joshua saw Waking Cloud talking to another woman, and he nodded at her. She excused herself and came to join them.

"Joshua, hello." She fell in alongside them. "How have you been?"

"Just fine. How is your family?" 

"Still back at the main camp," she sighed. "They're safe there, but I miss them."

"My sympathies are with you. If all goes well, your sacrifice will not be necessary for much longer."

"Thank you, Joshua." Her voice was warm, but the sadness in her eyes was evident.

"Uh, Waking Cloud," Daniel interjected. "This is Courier Six. If you don't mind, would you be willing to help her collect some items around Zion?"

"Of course." She moved toward the courier. "It's nice to meet you."

"Likewise." She dipped her head respectfully. They began to talk as more people joined them. The sound of conversation and laughter swelled up around them. The appearance of mirth might have fooled an outsider, but Joshua knew the group was more muted than usual. Everyone was on edge. He moved from person to person, making small talk, and the unspoken worries clouding their faces were obvious. _I have to talk to Daniel,_ he thought. _We cannot go on living like this._

The violence from the White Legs was infuriating, of course, but perhaps what bothered Joshua most was the terror they instilled in the entire population. People were afraid to leave their camps, and families like Waking Cloud's were split apart. The Dead Horses and the Sorrows weren't planning for the future, because they weren't sure if they would have one. The entire rhythm of life had been disrupted by fear.  _And Daniel..._

Daniel was a special person to him. He was one of the last links Joshua had to his community, and for that alone, he'd be forever grateful. Even beyond that, Daniel made every effort to treat Joshua like an equal - a friend, even. After all of his suffering, Daniel had every reason to hate him bitterly, but he never brought the past up against him.

"Come, sit. Make yourself comfortable," Waking Cloud sat down and patted the space next to her. Joshua saw the courier following behind her. One woman passed her a bowl of agave. The courier reached out and mumbled her thanks. She removed her helmet and laid it in front of her. Joshua studied her face intently, trying to figure out if he could place her among any of the people he'd met in his travels. Curly black hair fell out against her round face, and her thick eyebrows nearly knit together when she was focused, like right now as she stared at the rest of the group around them. The firelight flickered against the side of her cheekbone, casting a warm glow on her brown skin. He had only seen her face a few times before this, but the same thought struck him each time - _she's young._ Younger than she acted, at least. Younger than someone in her position should be. New Canaan was safe when he grew up, and Joshua had been fortunate enough to have a sheltered childhood, never even stepping foot outside of his town until he was a young man. He knew that others were often not so blessed. The Mojave had a way of making people grow up fast. 

She brushed her hair over to one side of her face and set the helmet down.

"Hello? Joshua?" He turned towards the voice he realized had been saying his name. Daniel was staring at him. "How long are you planning on staying?"

"Only tonight," he replied. "With things as dangerous as they are now, I don't feel comfortable leaving the Dead Horses for much longer." That brought a flash of embarrassment to Daniel's face. _He doesn't want to talk about the White Legs anymore,_ Joshua thought, _but I'm going to make him._ He just hoped it wasn't already too late.

"Well, let's give our new friend hospitality and enjoy our time together." Waking Cloud clapped a hand on the courier's shoulder. The way her dark eyes widened with alarm at the sudden touch was hard to miss. She recovered and offered Waking Cloud a faint smile. The conversation around them rose to a dull clamor. The Sorrows all had plenty of questions for him, mostly about their friends that were back at Dead Horse Point.

"How is Three Ferns doing? Has she had her baby?" One of the older women leaned over toward him. His mind went to the young woman he heard about last week in the main camp. It was easy to remember. She was one of only a few pregnant women in Zion. No one wanted to bring children into the world of uncertainty and fear they were living in right now.

"She's well." Joshua responded. "Yes, I heard she had the child. A girl. She's healthy." The rest of the group began to murmur cheerfully.

"Send her our congratulations." The old woman smiled.

Joshua kept stealing glances at the courier. It was obvious she didn't understand any of the Dead Horses' language. However, he saw her talking, albeit slowly, with one of the other women. With the assistance of hand gestures, they seemed to be communicating.

He watched her head tilt as she listened to the woman. She never expressed much emotion on her face, but her eyes were the exception - they were sharp and reactive. They told him she was keenly watching everything and everyone around her - _including me,_ he noticed. Several more times throughout the night, her eyes met his, even as she listened to the other people speak.  _Some people might find her pretty._ And in a sweet, almost cherubic way. With mild amusement, it occurred to him that was likely not the image she wished to project in a cutthroat place like the Mojave.  _That might be why she wears that helmet so much._ Not that he had a choice like she did, but he understood the advantages of covering your face to the world.

It could be a means of power and control over the circumstances and the people one encountered. For her, it might be a kind of freedom. She could be anyone. For him, it had mainly been a separation. No matter how hard he tried, he would always be set apart from other people - marked. _And those are the the wages I have earned,_ he chided himself.

He tried to tear his thoughts away from useless self-pity and back toward the people around him. It was late, but many of the Sorrows were still crowded around the fire, simply enjoying the warmth of each other's company. Right now, the night was calm and they were at peace. But this was only one night, and tomorrow, they'd all have to wake up and face whatever the morning brought. As the people around him spoke to each other in quiet tones, he lifted his eyes to the stars and prayed they would all be ready. 


	11. XI

The circle around the fire gradually thinned out over the course of a few hours as people said their goodbyes and went off to sleep. But not Graham - he could fucking _talk_. Six stifled a yawn behind her hand as he discussed who knows what with one of the Sorrows - somebody's cousin's grandpa's cousin, or something similarly absurd. He seemed to know everyone here, and could rattle off fifteen of their relatives off the top of his head. She tried to follow the conversation, but her eyes began to glaze over.

 _I wonder if he has friends._ She watched Graham speak to the young man next to him. He knew everyone's business, but didn't act familiar with them. _He's pleasant enough, but doesn't smile. He stands close to them, but never touches them._ The others seemed to regard him with awe. Everyone wanted to talk to him, but it was like he was always talking to the other people as a whole - never individually. Even his mannerisms seemed adapted to prop up some invisible barrier around him, whether he was conscious of it or not. 

Even in his courtesy, he was painfully serious, and now that she had more time to observe, she could sketch the outlines of the military man he used to be: the stern voice and straight back, blunt words and lack of hesitation. He never raised his voice or outright ordered anyone around, but even the most neutral statements were rendered commands when given from him. He never needed to say anything twice to get whatever it was he wanted.

"Well, we should all probably get to sleep," Daniel said, rising to his feet. Waking Cloud turned to her and smiled, the pale skin underneath her green eyes bunching up with affection.  

"I'll see you tomorrow, then? We will talk. Have a good night." Six nodded, and stood up alongside her.

"See you then."

So far, she liked Waking Cloud. The woman was kind to her in the short few hours they had known each other. She was quick to throw a protective arm around Six when they were talking. The solid muscular force in those hugs told Six she must be damn tough, too. They'd probably get along just fine. Daniel seemed nice, but the stress of their situation was taking a toll on him. He seemed tired and distracted, although he tried to be warm. It was clear he pitied her for the stroke of misfortune that had confined her here. She wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Shit like this was just kind of what she had come to expect from life now. 

Daniel rubbed the back of his neck and turned to Graham.

"We have a couple of bedrolls free. Back there." Daniel pointed up the hill.

"We'll talk tomorrow morning then, before I leave?" Graham phrased it like a question, but she heard the presumption in his voice.

"Sure. Are you waiting for her?" Daniel gestured toward Six.

"No. I have to take the warriors out to drill before dark. I'll come find you before I go." He turned toward her. "You'll be getting your assignments from Daniel now. You can stay over here, if you'd prefer."

"I think I'll come back at night." She supposed she didn't have a strong preference, but she was already set up back at the Dead Horses camp. The thought of lugging her bags back here anytime soon didn't seem appealing. _I might as well stay._ The expression in his eyes didn't change. _I guess he doesn't mind, either._

"You know the way back?"

She nodded.

"You're going to let her go back alone?" Daniel interjected. Graham didn't look away from her.

"She'll be fine." He sounded almost entertained by Daniel's objection. He walked past her, missing her shoulder by an inch. It took her a second to realize she was supposed to be following him.

She caught up to him, and they walked up the hill side by side. The day had been long and exhausting. It surprised her to realize they had spent most of it together, and things had gone fine. She hadn't expected how readily he agreed to help her with Randall Clark's burial. She could have handled it herself, but it felt more right with him there.

 _That's kind of a disturbing thought._ It was like she had to constantly check herself and remember who she was dealing with. He might be polite enough, but his courtesy didn't fool her for one second. Every single movement of his body displayed brutality, no matter how innocuous the gesture, and she wasn't going to forget it. Technically, he was pretty much making her stay in Zion whether she wanted to be here or not, and Six suspected that if she informed him she was leaving, he'd suddenly become a lot less polite. 

Even though she was well aware that this was not an entirely voluntary situation, she figured it was safest to keep playing along and pretending that it was. The long game always suited her just fine, and if there was anyone who could outplay her when it came to patience, she sure hadn't met them. 

"So, you're getting better with the language, I see." Graham turned his head toward her. She was puzzled for a second, then realized he must have been paying attention to her attempt at conversation with that older woman. Six hadn't caught her name, but she had kind eyes, with creases around them from smiling. It wasn't particularly surprising that Graham had noticed. He was staring at her all evening. Knowing him, it was probably some kind of intimidation thing. Too bad it wasn't going to work on her.

"Ah, not really. I still have no idea what's going on."

"But you seemed more communicative than you are with the Dead Horses."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Whatever kind of language the Sorrows speak is easier for me to understand. They have more Spanish words." Back at the campfire, the woman said something to her about ruido, which was easy, and she was able to piece together enough of the other words to respond with something, even if it wasn't entirely correct. Graham put his hands in his pockets.

"You're right, they do." He sounded like a teacher patiently launching into an explanation with practiced precision. "They both speak dialects of the same language, but as far as I can tell, the Sorrows have more Spanish linguistic influence than the Dead Horses." He gave her a glace out of the side of his eye. "Do you speak Spanish?"

"Yeah." She kicked a rock in front of her.

"Natively?"

"Yeah." That was one of the few things she just knew without having to search for.

"Interesting," he said, and he sounded like he actually meant it. "I didn't realize. Some of the other New Canaanites studied Spanish. I studied tribal languages instead, but I can understand bits and pieces, of course. It's so common, it's hard not to pick it up."

This was about the most excited she had seen him get about anything, and it was some pretty pedantic shit. Just when she thought she had pinned him down, there was something else he revealed to her.

"You studied languages?"

"Yes. It's a very old tradition of ours. We learn a language, then we travel - " he paused. "Then we traveled out as missionaries to other groups in order to spread our faith." She heard the way his voice faltered and saw his shoulders tensing. _He's so angry, but he didn't avoid talking about them,_ she noticed. He turned back to her.

"When did you learn English?"

She shrugged again.

"When I was younger."

He wouldn't say it out loud, but the look he gave her roughly translated to: _that's bullshit._

"That's a rather vague answer, don't you think?" 

She knew it was, of course, but no one ever seemed to call her on those. He looked at her expectantly. Up this close, she could see his blue eyes narrowing. _They're stunning._ Other people could practice all their lives and never be as forceful as he was with even the smallest of gestures.

"Yep." She gave him a deliberately disingenuous smile.

"Fine." He looked away, although the frustration he was trying to suppress was plain. "Where's your family from?"

She had exactly one clue on that front. It had come months ago. Raul was with her, and they were pilfering an old store off to the side of the road for supplies.

"Look," Raul had said, holding up a glass soda bottle with a strange white label.

"Ew." Her nose scrunched up in automatic disgust.

"So you've had this stuff?"

"Yeah." She looked at the amber liquid swirling around in the bottle. "I mean, I think so."

"I don't know how you could forget it." Raul gave her his special way of looking at her, like she was the most bizarre person to ever walk the earth. "Everyone hates it. It's pineapple flavored, or something. When my sister and i were kids, we used to dare each other to drink it and laugh when we gagged. They only marketed them in Mexico before the war, and the sales were terrible. You can still find them around there, but this far away is rare."

The liquid sloshed up against the glass, crashing like a wave as he shook it in his hand. Her eyes followed it, unable to look away.

"They're only in Mexico?"

"Yeah, and along the border towns, of course - boss, are you okay? You look even worse than usual." 

She pulled herself out of her thoughts and looked back up at Graham.

"Mexico," she said, with enough conviction that she almost believed it too. It was painfully flimsy evidence, almost too ridiculous to even count on, but what else did she have? Mexico it was. At this point, it didn't even matter if it was factual or not. it did the same job as the truth, whatever that may be.

"What part?"

She shrugged.

"That's all I got for you."

Maybe there was something sincerely wrong with her, but she couldn't help but enjoy the way his jaw tightened with aggravation. _He is not a patient man_.

They made it to the flat spot where the bedrolls were laid out. A few people were already sleeping in a cluster nearby.

"You can take that one."

She looked over her shoulder. He followed her gaze. "They have a watch posted at the only entrance. It's safe enough."

"Thanks," she said, although it bothered her a little that he knew she was concerned.

"It's likely that I will be gone by the time you wake up tomorrow."

"Why do you say that?"

He knelt down to rearrange the cover of the bedroll, and Six couldn't help but look down at him. Even crouched, he looked pretty impressive. He pulled his gun out of his holster and disassembled the magazine without looking up at her. _He must not have heard me,_ she thought. Her eyes drifted down to his back. His posture was always perfect, she noticed. It made him look even larger. And his shoulders - she allowed her gaze to linger, just for a moment. He just had a tangible physical power that couldn't help but be noticed. She had only met a few people in her life with that kind of presence. If he was anywhere near her, she was either staring at him or trying really hard not to.  _He's probably always been striking, even before the burns._

"Because you're not exactly an early riser." Her eyes darted back up to his face, and he was already staring at her as he replaced the magazine. He frowned, and she looked past him.

"Whatever." Her face started to feel warm. With his appearance, he must be used to it, but that didn't mean she wanted him to catch her gawking. It had to make him feel shitty to know that people were always staring at him. "How would you even know, anyway?" She shot back. 

"Because I am," he said, replacing the slide. "And I rarely see you on your feet before mid-morning." The self-satisfaction in his voice was plain.

Six bent down to her own bedroll, hoping to get out of this conversation. She liked to sleep in her armor sometimes, especially when she was in an unfamiliar place, but it was so warm tonight that she knew she'd overheat. Her hands paused over the buckles on the top of her armor.

"I told you. There's a guard. You'll be fine." That voice cut through her thoughts. She undid the buckle without looking up at him. _It's annoying as hell when he does that,_ she thought. She wished that ED-E was with her. Sleep was easier with him watching her back. When she rolled up her coat and laid her head upon it, the smell seized her mind and took it back to the Mojave. It was dust and smoke and creosote; life back home. _Not my home,_ she corrected. Just the closest she'd ever get to one.

There was a blanket laid out to her side, and she pulled it over herself and shut her eyes. All she could hear was the faint breathing of the sleeping people around her, and Graham moving around. He wasn't asleep. It unnerved her, but she tried to pick out the sound of the river rushing below her as a way to distract herself from him.  _There's a guard watching me. He can't shank me in the middle of the night._  She'd like to see him even try to sneak up on her. That thought was pretty funny - she had the sharpest eyes around, and he seemed physically incapable of being stealthy. At this point, she was at least seventy percent certain that he wouldn't try to hurt her, anyway, even if he did think she was irritating. She was still suspicious of him, but at least attempted murder didn't seem to be in the cards for either one of them. 

The fatigue had been at bay, but it hit her like a wave, and finally, she was able to drift off into an uneasy, shambling sleep.


	12. XII

The sun hung low in the sky, wobbling like a bright orange yolk dropped into a bowl. A warm golden glow fell upon everything in sight, like the day was only a few beautiful minutes away from ending. On top of this hill, she could see the red dirt rolling out for miles. There was a town further down, and she realized it was Goodsprings. Behind her, a water tower soared into the sky, looming too large over the small peak. That meant this was the cemetery.

Slats of wood sprang up from the dirt, marking where the bodies lay buried. It seemed there were more of them than there used to be. They spilled down the hill, stretching away as far as she could see, rolling and flowing in the shifty, half-hazy way that dreams had. One clear path led between the wooden planks, dividing the cemetery in half. She walked down it. At the end was a hole in the ground, freshly dug. There was nothing marking it.

_It's mine._

She circled the grave, then stopped when she was behind it, facing the sun. The wind blew, gently stirring the dead grass strewn around her.

"Hey, baby."

She looked up. Benny stood there, resting his elbow against a fencepost. He gave her a lazy two-fingered salute, then looked out over the slope of the hill.

"Of course we meet here. You're like the opposite of that old saying, you know? You forget, but you don't forgive." He turned around, a weary half-smile on the approximation of his face that her mind conjured.

Her stomach dropped. All of her senses were telling her that something was utterly wrong, but she couldn't find the origin of it. The air felt thick and heavy, like right before a storm, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

"Nah, but," he looked down. The sun was dropping out of view. His face was bright orange in the light. "I get it. You were just giving as good as you got, huh?" He took a pack of cigarettes out of his front pocket. The silver lighter flipped open in his hand, clinking back and forth, louder than it should have been. She stepped forward, and felt a dead shrub crunch beneath her foot.

"You got what you deserved. You took everything from me." The quiver in her voice surprised her, but the words rushed out. "None of this is my fault. I didn't want any of it."

He put a cigarette between her lips, then lit it.

"It takes two to tango, baby." He sounded amused. She bit down on the filter, hard, rolling it between her teeth and trying to quell her fear. Ash flooded into her mouth.

"I don't understand."

They stared out at the setting sun. Bright red light seeped into everything in its wake.

"Never seen you this slow on the draw." He laughed, but it sent more panic into the pit of her stomach. "That's fine. Don't worry about it. You got what you wanted, kid. I'm out of the game, but now..." Smoke curled around his face. "You're in."

"It's not a game," she tried to tell him, but her voice was thin and muffled, drowned out by the sickening dread wedged in her throat, and a hand forced her down to her knees, shoving her down to the ground, and she couldn't break free -

Night must have snuffed out the sun, because everything was black. She twisted around, trying to find him, but he was gone. The overwhelming darkness was all there was, where everything began and ended, and there was no way out and she was never going to wake up. It was like she was trying to scream to call for help, but no sound came out, just a harsh breath that ripped along her throat. She felt hands on her arms, but from far away. They couldn't move. Nothing moved. Her limbs were as useless as if they were tied. Everything in her brain screamed _move_ but she was frozen like a weight sat on her chest.

Her eyes finally forced their way open, and she was sitting up, gasping. Graham was crouching in front of her, silent, rubbing the side of his jaw with irritation. A candle lantern sat on the ground next to him, casting ominous shadows across his face. _I'm in Zion,_ she told herself. _Not back there. That wasn't real._ Her heart hammered in her chest so fast that it felt like it would never stop. It took her a moment to process what had happened.

"Oh, shit." A new wave of panic rolled over her. The annoyance didn't leave Graham's eyes, but it didn't turn into real anger, either.

"You hit hard." His fingers pressed along the the side of his face as he winced. "Good technique."

"I'm sorry," she pleaded.

"Settle down. I've taken worse."

"I didn't know."

He shook his head, and dropped his hand.

"I know. I should have known better than to wake you. I'm familiar with..." he trailed off. "I've seen it happen before. It's not uncommon among soldiers."

Her body was plastered with cold sweat. She pushed the damp strands off of her face and tried to piece her surroundings back together. This wasn't the camp or the bed she was used to. _I'm with the other tribe,_ she remembered.

"You were disturbing some of the tribals."

"Oh." Her hands kneaded the corner of the blanket that was twisted around her legs. She looked around, and saw the group of Sorrows downhill who were spying up at her with curiosity. She looked back at him. He was still crouched down, peering at her from underneath the bandages as if she were a lower life form that he was granting some strange kind of clemency. A book lay on the ground next to him, still splayed open as if he'd dropped it to deal with her.  _This couldn't be worse._  

"Who's Benny?" Six's attention snapped back to his face. "Someone you know?'

"It's complicated," she mumbled, hoping he'd drop it. Graham's eyebrows raised.

"A fiction we tell ourselves. It usually isn't." She had no idea what to say to that. _Fucking cryptic, as usual._

The sandy feeling in her throat was still there. Without looking back at him, she drew the blankets up around her shoulders and fell back down on the furs, lying on her side with her eyes open.

"You're not going to be able to sleep."

She was silent. With a small sigh, she heard him getting to his feet.

"Suit yourself." His footsteps told her he was going back to his bed. The light from the lantern faded behind her until all she could see was the blackness of the night.

Infuriatingly, he was right. Her heart was still pounding, and every noise around her caught her attention. Every so often, she heard Graham turning the pages in his book. She began to count each turn to see if it would bring her some relief. _One._ Some nights, when she couldn't sleep, she'd count things around her. Bullets in her bag, pebbles, all of the lights she could see from the Strip... _Two._ After seeing her do this two or three times, Boone began to hand her his bullets at the end of the night, too.

"Good idea. We should keep track." They both knew it was a bullshit pretense, but it was his way of being kind. He was so quiet that it might have slipped past most people, but she knew. When he watched her drink herself to sleep and then didn't wake her for her turn on the watch, he was being a good friend in the only way he knew how. There was an unspoken understanding between them that awful things happened, and sometimes enduring them meant changing in strange ways to work around the gaps they left in you. She wondered what he was doing right now. Probably sitting in that damn dinosaur and staring out at the horizon, waiting for her to return. _Three._

The rest of her friends were probably back in Vegas. _And Mr. House..._ her stomach turned as her thoughts settled on him. That was the whole reason she was here, right? She needed to make a choice. When she left, he was beyond pissed at her for not handing over the chip immediately. He had done nothing but pressure her, and she was sick of it. It was obvious that House thought she was a moron, and she hated him for talking down to her, but she had enough sense to know that if someone was pushing her to act quickly, it was in her best interest to slow down. He offered her more money, but it wasn't going to work on her. She made enough to live off of from her odd jobs, and besides, she didn't have anything to use it for. At this rate, who even knew how much longer she'd live, anyway? _What use does a walking dead person have for money?_  

She wished Arcade was here. His advice was always what she needed to hear.  

"I know you're not asleep."

Graham's voice was low. She stayed still and pretended she didn't hear. 

"This is a little juvenile, don't you think?" 

She rolled her eyes and sat up.

"How about you mind your own business? Why are you even sitting up awake, anyway?" She meant to sound rude and hateful, but couldn't seem to muster up any genuine harshness. He blinked as if he were surprised she would ask such a thing. He closed his book and ran his hands along the cover.

"It can be difficult for me to sleep." The way he glanced down at himself in explanation was subtle, but she saw it. He gave her that look of vexation that she had seen at least a hundred times since she had arrived in Zion. It was becoming so familiar that could nearly picture what it might have looked like on his face before his disfigurement. 

 "Right." She tried to sound contrite, and mentally kicked herself for not realizing it was about his burns. Her head might be a mess, but at least she still had her body. No matter what she thought about the guy, she couldn't help but feel a tiny bit sorry for him because of that. Call it a weakness of hers. Everybody had to have a few. She wondered how long it had been since Graham was burned. Probably a few years, at least, if her understanding of recent history in the Mojave was accurate. Her hands pulled at the corner of the blanket again, and the lantern glowed next to him.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yes. Come here."

She paused, unsure about that part of the deal, and he sensed her hesitation.

"We shouldn't wake the others," he reminded her. The exasperation in his tone was subtle, but she got what he was implying: _don't make yourself any more of a nuisance than you already have._ She pulled the blanket around her shoulders and walked to his bed roll. After nudging some of the rocks away with her boot, she sat down on the ground beside him. He was already looking down at her, his book set aside. _This is weird,_ she thought, but she wanted to know what exactly happened to him. Maybe this would be her only chance.

"So. Is it all true?" 

"Well, that depends on what you've heard, doesn't it?" 

"Uh," she swallowed. "You know." How the fuck was she supposed to say "About Caesar setting you on fire and throwing you in the Grand Canyon" with tact?

 "You're dancing around it," he said, as if it hardly bothered him.

 "Fine." She waved her hand in the air. "By 'it,' I mean...what Caesar did at the Grand Canyon." She decided not to say the part about him being lit on fire, because that was obvious enough from his bandages and scars. 

"Yes. That part is true. He had his men douse me in pitch and light it on fire. Then they threw me down the side of the canyon. He watched."

He sounded calm, but she forced herself not to tremble. _Fucking monster._ That was just about in line with what she knew of Caesar. She hadn't met him yet, but she had seen enough of his handiwork. There was quite possibly no one alive that she hated more than him. Every single dead-eyed traveler she passed on the road fleeing his Legion had already stoked that fire in her heart.

She heard from multiple tellings of the story that Graham didn't scream when it happened. That part had seemed like an exaggeration, until she actually met him. She sort of believed it now. The worst part must have been waiting for them to light the pitch. Just having to stand there at the edge of your grave with your hands tied behind your back, powerless. It made her stomach turn.

"I'm - "

"Save your sympathy." His voice was sharp like glass. She didn't flinch. She understood that impulse well enough. Pity was worse than outright fear or hatred, sometimes.

"Does it still hurt?" 

"Every day."

"And how did you make it out of there?"

"I walked." He said it like it was the most simple thing in the world. "It took me three months to return home. If I remember correctly, my arm was broken in two places. Several ribs, as well. There were countless other fractures...I didn't know. I couldn't even think clearly. I just knew I had to keep going, or I would die. And there was only one place I could possibly go."

"And before that? How did it all start?"

 Their eyes stayed locked on each other. She could fill in enough of the gory details of his injuries on her own, but this was the question that had been gnawing at her since the day she first met him. He hardened his face until the sadness left his eyes.

"The missions I told you about earlier - I was on mine. I was supposed to meet a few Followers of the Apocalypse and go with them to the tribes in the Grand Canyon."

As far as she knew, he was telling the truth so far. Arcade told her once that Caesar began as a Follower, and it surprised her. She had a higher opinion of them than just about any other group in the Mojave. 

"And Caesar was one of them."

"Not yet. He wasn't Caesar then. He was just Edward. And Edward and I…" He sighed. "Well. I can't expect you to understand that, in the aftermath of it all. But yes, that was the beginning of this path to Hell that I have walked. It was small things, at first. I was his translator. Then translating became giving orders. Over time, the situation changed, and giving orders became training. Punishing. Terrorizing. You've already heard about that part." She nodded. "It was a fall into a terrible darkness, and I stayed there until after I crawled out of the canyon. Do you understand?"

She paused, fiddling with the lace on her boot. 

"Yes and no." Her eyes darted up to look at his reaction. The light from the lantern danced on the side of his face, and for some reason, he was the one that seemed confused.

"How can it be both yes and no?"

"I don't know." She wrapped her arms around her knees. "I mean. I get it, but also on some level, I just don't. None of this makes sense, because you…" She trailed off. He cocked an eyebrow at her. It was easy to imagine him killing. _But I'm a killer too,_ she thought, settling on the real heart of the problem. _I just wouldn't hurt people who don't pose a threat to me._ She was anything but naive. The world they found themselves in was hard. When you lived that way, violence was inevitable.

Six thought about Nipton - about the low wailing of the men, about the slow drips of dark blood from the rusted nails piercing their hands. That wasn't self-preservation. It was unbridled cruelty. She remembered the glint in Vulpes Inculta's eyes. He was enjoying their pain. That was sadism. There was no other word for it. _His reasoning just doesn't add up. He's got to be holding something back._

"Like, one day you just woke up and found yourself agreeing to slaughter and conquer, even though you knew it was wrong? People don't just change like that. Where was the line between okay and not-okay, and what made you cross it? I don't get it. You haven't persuaded me."

 For once, he looked absolutely baffled. 

 "How am I to persuade you of something that already happened?" 

 "Look, I've..." she ran a hand through her hair. "I've done plenty of shit I should probably regret. But not like that. There are people that need to die, and people that don't. How can you go from one to the other so easily?"

"How can you separate the two so easily? Have you asked yourself in whose name you make those judgments?"

"In my own. I'd murder a hundred men like Caesar and never feel guilty for one second about it." She was leaning forward now, tearing through her words. "But other people just trying to live and be left alone? Who didn't sign up for this shitty kind of life?" She shook her head. "That's what I can't understand. You're clearly not stupid, or out of your mind. Show me a good reason for all of that, and I'll believe you."

He looked at her, or more accurately, through her.

"Ah, I see. A skeptic. You don't believe until you see with your own eyes." A dark sort of humor crept into his voice. "You're young. You don't understand because you haven't gone through it yourself."

"Gone through what?" 

"You have plenty of hatred in your heart. I can hear it." His voice was hard. "But have you ever loved?"

"What?" It was such an absurd question that for a second, she thought she misheard him. 

"Have you ever truly loved someone or something?" It felt like he had knocked the air out of her lungs. He knew he had her, and seized upon the opening. "Your parents, your siblings. A friend. A home. God. Power or money or control. Your tribe. A lover." 

She had nothing to say.

"I thought so." He looked down. "Don't misunderstand me. I had hatred in my heart, too. It made things easier. The fall was faster. But I don't believe it's necessary anymore. Love wicked things, and you will end up in the same place anyway. You will destroy anything that threatens what you love, and then, you come to love the destruction itself, and you will not know how deeply you have been poisoned and how far you have strayed until it's too late." He stared into the candle flame. "Hatred can be strong, but it cannot sustain itself forever. But love..." He paused like he was searching for the right words. "Love is the most powerful force that God gives humanity. But it rules us, too. The question we all must answer every day is who or what we decide to serve." He looked back at her, right into her eyes. "Is that to your satisfaction, Courier Six?" 

He had her speechless, again. Nothing more complex than that could manifest in her brain. 

"Yeah."

"Good."  

They sat there for a long time in complete silence. Eventually, she gathered up her blanket and left to go back to her own bed. She thought about speaking to him before she left, but she decided against it. There was nothing left that they needed to say to one another. 

Her head rested upon her coat, and the pent-up fear in her body had given way to a kind of uncertainty so overwhelming that it stilled the buzzing of her mind. She turned her back away from the lantern that still flickered against the blackness, and she didn't have any more dreams that night.


	13. XIII

Six stood over a flat spot worn into the red rock, watching the blanket in her hands billow in the breeze. She laid it out on the ground, smoothing the corners down. A breathtaking view of the hills rolled out beneath her. All of the days here were beautiful, of course, but today was spectacular. Six still kept stealing glances of the canyon as she began to clean her rifle. It was like she couldn't get enough of looking and was afraid it would go away at any moment.

She unzipped her pack and pulled out her firearm cleaning supplies. _My favorite first. I shouldn't let the others know._ The old hunting rifle fit perfectly in her hands, comforting in its weight. It was her most prized possession. She saw it behind the glass case in Novac and suddenly felt like a child who knew exactly what she wanted for Christmas. For months, she went out of her way to pick up scrap metal and take extra jobs just to earn enough caps to buy it. It was basically love at first sight. She started smoothing the rag out along the barrel. The metal began to shine beneath the grime and dirt it had collected.

A few people walked by. She nodded to them, then looked back down at her work. Lately, the people here had seemed to warm up to her. She tried to stay out of the way, but Waking Cloud and Follows-Chalk kept dragging her out to talk in the evenings. This past week, she wasn't really getting enough alone time for her liking, but she was so grateful for the hospitality that she forced herself to be more sociable. Once she relaxed and settled in more, she found that most of the people were hospitable and friendly. Despite the fact that she didn't speak their language well, people began to come up to her and talk anyway. They came in pairs or groups, and would bring her food or grab her shoulder and smile while Waking Cloud stood next to her, beaming with pride.

"They've heard you've been helping us," she translated. "They say thank you."

She tried to learn how to say "thank you for your kindness," and "nice to meet you" in their language. It was difficult for her to keep the words in her mind, but whenever she responded in her best approximation, their delight made it worth it.

An elderly woman smiled at her and waved as she walked past. Six sat up and waved back. It looked like a few people just arrived. She bent back over her gun. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a few of the warriors and some of the elderly. This was a war camp, but sometimes the people from the main camp came by, especially the important ones. There was one man she recognized standing with an older woman. They were talking with animated hand gestures, but their faces were drawn and serious.

Her eyes traveled over the rest of the group, then her hands paused on the gun for just a moment. Joshua Graham was speaking with one of the men. It had been almost a week since she had seen him last in the Sorrows camp.

The morning after their conversation, she woke up and he was gone like he said he'd be. The previous night felt surreal, and they had stayed up so late talking that she was dead tired. When she got up and began to pack up her things, she nearly missed it. A few packets of coffee were laid on top of her bag. A smile crossed her face. She had been so good the whole time she was here: no drinking and no smoking, but she was about ready to kill someone for a cup of coffee. Then she realized where, or more precisely, who they came from. She stared at them, her hand hovering over the silver foil.  _I guess he pays attention._

At the campfire that morning, she poured the coffee into a mug of hot water and thought about him. That became part of her routine that week. She'd watch the dark brown grounds swirl up from the bottom of the cup, and allow herself exactly as long as it took to drink to let her mind wander where it wanted. Parts of their last conversation drifted through her head all week.

She still didn't understand him, or how she should treat him. He had gone from a brutal force of nature to a broken man and back again right in front of her eyes. Ruthless and thoughtful, somehow at the same time. Domineering in one turn, then self-flagellating in the next. The contradictions were endless, and she stood by the fire for fifteen minutes a day and tried to resolve them. It wasn't nearly enough time.

 _How can it be both yes and no?_ he had asked her. How else was she supposed to describe it?

Each morning, those questions called her back to him like a magnetic pull. _Maybe those bullets bouncing around in my head messed up whatever part of the brain that's supposed to tell you to run away from danger._ That would honestly explain a lot about the past few months. After she finished the coffee, she immediately put all thoughts of him aside. _Time's up._ She would grab her rifle and helmet and walk out to meet Waking Cloud and the other Sorrows that joined them, ready to focus on their work.

Most nights that week, she returned to the Dead Horses camp, but it was usually so late that she hardly saw anyone awake. Joshua made it clear that no one was to be out alone after dark, but she had been slipping in much later. Things over in the Narrows were that busy. Daniel was in worse shape than she thought, and she was working her ass off to help him. While they were out collecting supplies or eliminating camps, some of the other Sorrows let it slip to her that they were frustrated with the looming evacuation, even though it was what Daniel thought was best. It was just a mess, and she was trying not to get in the middle of things, which she seemed to have an unfortunate talent for. _Keep your head down and keep getting results,_ she reminded herself. _Then you can get out of here sooner._

Her breakneck pace paid off. Daniel relieved her a day earlier than they planned.

"I don't have anything for you to do right now," he'd said, looking bewildered. "We have to wait until the scouts get back. Come back in two days."

She walked back to the Dead Horses camp in the golden afternoon light, her feet faster than usual. It wasn't like she had a lot of hobbies or anything to attend to, but a day to rest would be nice. Maybe tomorrow, she'd go up in the hills again and shoot some targets for extra practice. With the way things were going around here, she'd probably need it.

She lifted the lever on her gun and noticed Joshua looking at her over his shoulder from across the clearing. _He's about to walk over here,_ she thought. _Damn it._ She silently noted her successful prediction as he crossed to where she was sitting. She refused to look at him, and he stood far enough back to have plausible deniability that he was watching her. There was nothing but the sound of the rifle's lever clicking back down into place.

"Beautiful." He finally commented. She shouldn't have been startled, but something about that voice just caught her off guard. She looked up, forcing herself to move slowly and not act scared. He was standing several feet back from her blanket with his arms folded across his chest. His eyes were trained on the rifle in her hands.

Despite her wariness, she felt the hint of a smile cross her face. Guns were one of her favorite things, and she recognized a kindred interest. She'd be the first to admit it, but she was a little weird about them. It took an agonizingly long time for her to figure out which ones to bring on this particular trip. Right now, she was really missing that grenade rifle she'd picked up in Novac. Quite a few Legion camps had met their bloody end that way. Whenever she got bored, she'd go out in the hills and look for a group of red tents. As much as she liked the way the legionaries screamed and scrambled when they realized a well-hidden assailant was firing grenades at their feet, she also liked the way Boone's eyes widened in astonishment every time she hauled it out.

"It's that kind of night?" He'd say, deadpan as usual.

 _Too much fun, but it was just too heavy to pack,_ she thought sullenly. Her thoughts came back to Joshua as he continued staring down at her gun. 

"Would you like to hold it?" She stood and offered it to him. His hands closed around the barrel, and she watched as he deftly spun it around into place. It didn't look so big in his hands as it did in hers.

"It's lovely, but too large for my personal taste." He sounded almost apologetic. "Still remarkable. What does it shoot?" She rubbed a black spot off of her palm.

".308's. It's just a scoped hunting rifle, nothing fancy. I love her, though. Her name is Paciencia." If he thought her naming the gun was odd, he didn't show it.

"Fitting, for you."

They were both lost in admiration for a moment. Six stared at the gun like a proud mother. He turned the rifle on its side and ran his fingers over the tick marks in front of the trigger guard.

"Is this some kind of count of how many people you've killed?" His disdain was obvious. She leaned over to where he was pointing and smiled.

"Oh, no, that'd be a little tacky, don't you think?" She touched the marks where his fingers had been only a second ago. "That's how many people have tried to kill me."

His eyes stayed glued to the weapon, but she noticed his eyebrows lift up where she couldn't see them anymore. "I count by attempts, though, not individuals, so parties get recorded as one mark. There's a whole system." Joshua didn't seem to register that she was trying to joke with him. He turned the gun over in his hands again.

"Something else we have in common, then," he said, then paused. "Did you add one for the White Legs?" She accepted the rifle as he laid it gently in her hands. His eyes met hers, bright and intense.

"That's what I'm about to do. I'm gonna be out here for a while." He didn't look away. "Uh, if you want to join me or something, you're welcome to." No response came from him. She sat back down, and to her surprise, he removed his own pistol from his hip and sat down next to her. It seemed oddly familiar of him, but he was acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Her eyes followed his handgun as he began to clean it.

"I noticed that earlier. It's gorgeous. What does it say?" She pointed to the strange inscription on the side of the barrel. Joshua handed her the gun.

"And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not," he said, leaning over to grab a rag from her pile.

"I like that." Mostly, she just liked how he said it. She felt the weight of the pistol in her hand. It was much lighter than she expected. "What language is it?"

"Greek. It's from the Gospel of John."

She wasn't quite sure what he meant, and turned the gun over to see the other side of the barrel. "It's the original language of the New Testament," he offered, as if he saw her confusion.

"Oh." A dim pulse of recognition came to her. It sounded somewhat familiar. "I see." She took one last look at the gun. It was already finely made, but it appeared that Joshua had maintained it incredibly well. It probably fired like a dream. The snakeskin grip felt good against her palm, if a little rough. She held it back out to him.

"Looks like a forty-five auto, with a..." she tilted her head and squinted at it, "a shorter barrel, maybe?" He paused, his hand hovering over hers.

"Exactly right." He took the gun from her outstretched hand. It seemed like he was careful not to touch her fingers.

"I don't think I've ever shot one."

"You don't think?" He sounded almost pleased. "You'd remember if you had. There's nothing else like it." He held the gun over his lap and slid the magazine back into the base, way too slow for her comfort. "Anyway, we ought to rectify that sometime. I think you'd enjoy yourself."

"Oh, I'm sure I would," she said, staring down as he wrapped his hand around the grip and laid the pistol on the blanket between them. An idea came into her head. "Hang on. I have something I think you might like." She dug around in her bag, then felt her hand on María. She took out the magazine and laid it gently on the blanket next to him. "I keep her with me at all times, in case things get up close and personal. We've been through a lot together." He picked the gun up, eyebrows raised.

"Yes, I've seen you use it before. It's stunning." He took his time lingering over the ivy damascene that wound around the barrel, then began tracing a scarred finger along the pearlescent grip. "The Virgin of Guadalupe. This is marvelous." He fingered the guard around the golden trigger; entrancingly slow and surprisingly dexterous. "Nine millimeter bullets?"

Six felt her throat tighten. "Yeah. Nine millimeter."

She watched him turn it over and trail his fingers along every edge and curve of the pistol, reverent, completely unhurried. After a moment, he looked up at her, his expression unreadable.

"Where did you get this?"

A vision intruded in front of her eyes; a flashing image of tightening her hands around Benny's throat. The feeling of the raw crunch against her palms seemed as real as if it were happening all over again.

"Rummage sale." She grinned. "You won't believe the kind of stuff you can find if you get there early."

The look on his face was so plainly not amused. He looked up at the sky, stony-faced, and Six could practically hear what he was probably thinking: _Lord, grant me patience to deal with this insolent rogue that tripped her way into my unspoiled Eden._ That must be close to what it was like inside his head, she thought, biting her lip so as not to laugh.

"Ah, you all must have missed me while I was gone," she teased. She almost felt bad, but it was just too damn easy to work him up.

"And yet, it's you who returned a day early."

The smile on her face faded.

"Daniel told me to take the day off. He said there wasn't much left for me to do."

"Of course." He sounded sardonic. "Your work ethic is admirable."

She looked down at the gun in her hand and wiped the rag over a spot on the barrel that she had already cleaned.

"The food's better over here," she muttered.

"I'm sure."

The silence between them crackled.

"Joshua." One of the men waved him over from across the camp. This was always what it was like for him during the day. People were constantly running up to him, asking for assistance or advice. 

"Until we meet again." Graham stood and holstered his gun. "Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you." She looked up, her breath caught in her throat.

"Get back here before nightfall from now on, or so help me God, I will come find you myself and drag you back." He folded his arms and tapped a finger on his elbow, slow and menacing. "I won't warn you twice."

An involuntary chill ran down her spine. Six was positive her eyes must have looked like dinner plates, especially because she was all the way down on the ground, but she made herself exhale, slow and calm. _This shit isn't going to work on me,_ she told herself, gathering up every bit of her courage. _I'm not going to be afraid of you like everyone else is._

She leaned back and gave him a closed-mouth smile that she had practiced enough to make threatening - a thin veil of ersatz cheer thrown over a predatory emptiness.

"And wouldn't that be a shame if you did?"

Predictably, he didn't look daunted like most people usually did. Instead, he took a step forward and dropped his voice, as if something contrary to reason was compelling him.

"Perhaps. This is working out agreeably enough so far. Let's not test it."

She tilted her chin up at him, and with a final glower down at her, he turned away. She watched him walk toward the man who had called him, unable to stop herself from feeling gratified.

_I think out here, we call that a draw._

She leaned back over her rifle, and started to reassemble it. It took her a moment to realize that her heart was still thumping quick in her chest, like it was keeping some kind of unnaturally fast time. She told herself it was nothing, and kept wiping down the gun.


	14. XIV

Although winter was approaching, tonight was unusually warm, and as Joshua paced what felt like his fiftieth circle around the room, he realized he had to get outside. Staying in here wouldn't do him any favors.

Tonight was difficult. His thoughts were feverish, swirling around his mind with no respite. They'd dispatched yet another raiding party earlier that afternoon, and even before the whimpers of death faded from the throats of the broken bodies around him, Joshua knew the Dead Horses needed to strike a decisive blow, and soon. He wasn't getting anywhere with Daniel, and he was all but done trying to convince him. It looked like the Dead Horses were going to have to fight without the Sorrows. It wasn't what he wanted, but their options were narrowing and they were running out of time, and he would not stand by idly while the White Legs polluted God's temple. 

He took his gun and slipped it in the holster as he exited the cave. The fire burned down long ago, and only the moon threw light on the camp as everyone else slept. He rounded the corner to the entrance of the camp, and corrected himself. _Someone else is awake._ He should have known she would be up. The courier was sitting next to the dead fire with one leg extended, running a knife along a small piece of wood. His feet changed direction toward her without any input from his mind. She spun the knife around her fingers and pointed it at him, deft and fast.

"Don't point that at me unless you'd use it." He kept his voice low.

She lowered it slightly, looking unsure.

"I definitely would."

That, for some reason, did a little to lift his awful mood.

"I know." He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. Her shoulders were tense, but she met his gaze with bold hostility. _I must have startled her._ It was obvious to him that she lived a risky life. He'd been through enough of his own ordeals to recognize how she constantly scoured her surroundings for threats. Living like that made it impossible to stop looking around the corner for the next danger lying in wait.

"Let's try this once more." He sighed. "I'm going for a walk. I don't suppose you'd like to join me?"

"A what?" She looked even more incredulous than before. "A walk? To do what?"

"It's not to do anything. It's just for enjoyment."

"And you want me to come with you?"

He was starting to regret this entire interaction.

"Yes."

She frowned, and he realized she was going to say no. After all, even he had to admit it was the prudent thing to do.

"Okay."

He looked over his shoulder as she pulled her boots on. It felt like it took her an agonizingly long time to tighten her laces. The antagonistic glance she shot him halfway through convinced him that her pace was intentional. He waited for her to stand, and they left the entrance of the camp together.

"Wait. I thought no one was allowed to leave at night," she accused, in one last-ditch effort to be uncooperative.

"Unsurprisingly, a failure on your part to correctly heed orders. I said no one should be out alone. We're not alone." He looked down at her hardened face. "And between the two of us, I'm not exactly worried about our defensive capabilities, are you?" Her composure finally broke into a small but decidedly mischievous smile.

"Worried for the unlucky bastard who runs into us, maybe."

He looked down with quiet satisfaction. They walked up the trail for a while, and Joshua wordlessly followed her lead and let her pick which directions they took. There wasn't much of Zion that he hadn't already seen. Given more than one path, she always tended to choose the one that had them climbing up to higher ground. The moon was in its first quarter, and there wasn't much light to see the ground by. She kept lifting her face to the sky, presumably to look at the stars, but she never stumbled, even on paths that most people would find trying.

"Searching for anything in particular?"

She squinted up.

"No, I'm just sort of taking it all in. The sky is so clear. It's nothing like New Vegas."

"I would imagine not," he responded. It had been years since he last set foot in the wasteland. Back then, it was a violent, lawless place, and from what he had heard it was worse now, thanks in part to the rapidly escalating power struggle over New Vegas. It made him even more thankful that he had been able to walk away from it all. The Mojave was a great Gordian knot that no man seemed to be able to untangle. At least here in Zion, he could take some kind of tangible action against the wrongdoing he saw encroaching upon God's will on earth.

They walked without speaking for a while, and the only sound was the ground crunching underneath their footsteps. It was a clear, tranquil night, and the courier seemed lost among her own thoughts. It didn't bother him. It was enough to simply have someone else's presence at his side. He could already feel his mind starting to still. 

In a silent moment such as this, when she was not trying to be diplomatic or contrarian with him, it was more apparent to him how peculiar she was. There was something otherworldly hidden in her expression, like her dark eyes had glimpsed something not conveyable to other humans and she was holding it back from them all, silently surveying and biding her time for God alone knew what.

"Let me ask you for some advice," she said, her voice calm and passionless. Her eyes were still lifted to the stars. He looked down at the trail in front of them, trying to avoid the pitfalls he knew were ahead.

"Go ahead."

"In your opinion, what would be the best way to take down the Legion for good? Target Caesar and kill him, or destroy their army on the field?"

For a moment, he was unable to articulate anything resembling a response. He saw Edward's face, clear as day - not Caesar, the man he became, but Edward. Not even time could take that burden from his mind. In a few of his memories, his cheeks were flushed with anger; his eyes were indignant at the entire world that he perceived to be against him. But in most of his memories, Edward's face was draped with that easy, captivating smile that reeled people in toward him.

"Kill him."

"Huh. That's interesting," she spoke with a restrained sort of curiosity, as if he had merely remarked on the weather. "Did you know that out of everyone I've asked, you're the first person to say that?"

"I say it because Caesar orchestrates everything. I don't know all of his new..." he paused with the distaste rising in his throat. "Lieutenants. But I don't think many of them have the mind for keeping the Legion together. I certainly didn't. Unfortunately for us all, Caesar has an uncommon ability to see both the forest and the trees. Sui generis, or so he'd like to think."

"And what about you?" Her voice lowered, and her head tilted toward him. Her dark eyelashes raised, brushing up against the skin under her browbone. It looked soft, like velvet. "What do you see?"

He looked at the trail straight ahead of them.

"The trees."

Several more minutes passed with no words between them. Then, she stopped, and lifted her arm to the sky.

"What about those three stars?"

He leaned in closer to her, trying to follow where her finger pointed.

"This one?"

"To the left a little." She waved her hand.

"Here?"

"No, right here." She reached over, surely out of some utilitarian effort, and took the top of his hand in hers, and guided it until both of their arms were pointing at the same star. He was so utterly caught off guard that he couldn't disguise it quickly enough. His sharp intake of breath must have been noticeable, because she flinched back, her eyes wide.

"Oh shit." For once, she looked apprehensive. "Oh, I didn't mean to do that. I forgot. Sorry if I hurt you." The horror in her eyes was obvious.

"It's all right. It didn't hurt." He was lying through his teeth. His hand flexed involuntarily. There were parts of his skin that were numb and dead to sensation, but his hands weren't one of them. It stung as badly as any pain he had come to know.

The ache broke something down inside of him. His mind tumbled backwards through the past few years, trying to remember the last time another person had voluntarily touched him. He came up empty-handed. Surely, at the time, it had passed without him even noticing. Back then, he had taken it and everything else for granted, never imagining that one day it could be stolen from him.

It filled him with a hunger he had forgotten he possessed. The simple feeling of a person's skin against his was overwhelming. He thought of the years when his parents and brothers would kiss him on the top of his head, and his friends would put their hands on his arm, and lovers would breathe against his ear -

"Joshua." She cradled her offending hand against her chest, as if to hold it back. "I'm sorry." 

 _She calls me by my first name now._ When had that started?

"It's not important." He turned away. "Those stars are part of a larger constellation called Orion - the hunter." 

"Oh." She sounded unsure, but her eyes lifted back to them, her lips slightly parted. "I don't know why, but those three are my favorites. I like to try to find them at night. You can always see them in the Mojave."

It was such a tiny detail, but it felt like something new. He wondered how many nights she must have passed in the desert with only those stars for company, both suffering and causing God knows what kind of trouble. He looked back down at her, with her slow mouth and her unyielding eyes and that determination that simmered in her, low and steady. In some way, out here away from the rest of the world, he saw something familiar reflected back at him. That realization brought him equal measures of comfort and sorrow.

"What's your name?"

She looked back at him and her face drew up, incredibly serious, and she clasped her hands together.

"Okay, I know this is tough to follow, but it's - " she slowed her voice down, emphatically moving her hands. "Courier. Six."

Maybe exhaustion or the stress had finally gotten to him and worn his resolve thin, because in place of anger, he almost felt himself start to smile. _She's relentless._

"It must be foreign." He crossed his arms. "Come on. Let's talk honestly and stop this dance. What should I call you?"

Her black eyes turned up at the edges and the gentle slope of her nose crinkled slightly. It was an entirely new kind of smile that he hadn't seen on her face yet: pure and joyful and full of possibility.

"I really can't tell you that," she said, her eyes still lighting up. "But since you just actually managed to make a joke, how about this: just call me Six. That's what my friends call me."

It was halfway there, and if that was all he had, he'd have to take it.


	15. XV

"This one? Some casino goon hit me upside the head with a bottle for getting too friendly with his girlfriend. Allegedly." Six rolled her eyes and rubbed the bumps on the side of her chin. "I was pulling pieces of glass out of my face for days." She raised a finger in the air. "I'll admit it, I deserved most of these, but that one was totally unfair. It was a dirty shot, too. I wasn't even looking." 

"Are you sure?"

"Am I sure of what?"

Joshua glanced down at her with that now-familiar fragment of shrewdness in his eyes. 

"That you didn't deserve it."

"Ouch." She looked up at him in mock indignation. "No trust, huh? I see how it is."

"I wouldn't say that. But I'm sure you can understand my reservations."

Most nights, their conversation drifted toward this game. They'd always talk business first: usually about the White Legs, or Vegas, or Caesar's Legion. After a few minutes of silence, Joshua would turn to her and point at a scar or mark, his fingertip always hovering a fraction of an inch away from her skin, and ask where it came from. She was surprised he was interested, but for whatever reason, he must have been getting some kind of enjoyment out of hearing her stories. Half of the scars he pointed at were old, and she had to confess that she didn't remember how she got them. However, she'd gotten her ass kicked enough recently to have an acceptable amount of material to work with.

On a few lucky occasions, he'd point one out, and she'd begin to tell him that she didn't know, but before the words could roll off her tongue, she'd halt, and some flicker of revelation would come to her.

"I - " she rubbed her thumb against a smooth light scar on the side of her finger, and for just a second, she could feel the heat and the sting and the bubbling of the skin all over again. "I burned it on a candle, I think, when I was a little kid."

By now, she figured out that this basically amounted to him tricking her into talking about herself, but she didn't mind. It even began to feel like a relief, in a strange way.

Their nighttime walks slowly picked up in frequency. Before she knew it, it had turned into a habit that she'd spend all day anticipating. When she was back in camp, they'd pass each other with nothing more obvious than a businesslike nod. In daylight, it felt like they went out of their way to avoid each other, but the nights were a different story. Without fail, Joshua would come by when she couldn't sleep. The idea that he was watching her that closely made her antsy at first, but she decided to roll with it. He wasn't getting any less belligerent, but there were moments when it seemed like he was loosening up a little. She started to wait up for him near the fire pit, and most of those nights she'd stare into the last of the flames that licked the firewood and try to straighten out exactly what the hell she was doing.

 _The meanest, toughest son of a bitch in the whole damned Legion,_ she remembered Jed telling her; and here they were one month later, sneaking out at night together like a pair of kids. She still saw that first, terrible version of him, the hazy but vicious image that loomed in the back of her mind when she stepped in Angel Cave for the first time. She would probably never stop seeing it. It just sort of fleshed out with the more details she learned. Sometimes, as she sat by the fire waiting for him with her boots already on and a tight feeling coiling in her stomach, she felt guilty about whatever kept drawing her toward him.

It was easier to just not think about it.

No one would ever believe her, but he actually smiled sometimes. It was small and easy to miss, and he usually looked down to hide it, but she caught it a few times by the crinkles around his eyes. She began to tell her stories with increasing melodrama, just to try to work a smile out of him. It was a point of pride when she could.

During their conversations, he was surprisingly forthcoming about his life in the Legion. The way he mentioned Caesar and Vulpes and Lucius and the rest of the Legion command made it all sound almost mundane. Sometimes, he started to call Caesar by his real name instead, and the jarring way he caught himself grabbed her attention every time. She noticed that when they were talking, he tended to fall back on speaking in generalities, probably to avoid the gruesome specifics. He didn't strike her as the type to intentionally spare her any discomfort, so if she had to guess, he was trying to protect his own image in her eyes. She would have thought he'd have nothing left to lose on that front, but maybe she was wrong.

She was curious about what he was getting out of this whole situation, but she reckoned even the devil himself must like having company sometimes.

"I used to come out here and walk by myself," he explained one night as they walked along a stream that wound through a narrow canyon. "But I noticed you often stay awake during the nights, too."

"I have a lot of trouble sleeping." She eyed the rocky footpath in front of her. "Like the other night. You saw it." She shook her head and tried to suppress the fear that accompanied that particular memory. A few more times since then, she had dreamed about the cemetery again. If anything, it was a compelling motivation to stay awake. "Anyway. I usually have my partner with me and we take turns keeping watch, which helps. But even with him there, it's just hard for me sometimes."

Under the bandages, Joshua's face noticeably darkened, gloom rolling over him like a raincloud.

"I see." His voice sounded even more severe than usual. She shook her head and looked out at the stream than ran alongside them. He could be temperamental, and it was hard to tell what would bother him. Although the whys were still a mystery to her, she was getting better at deciphering what he was feeling, even behind the bandages. It wasn't hard once she knew what details to concentrate on - his eyes narrowing, his jaw clenching, his lips pressing together in a line, all shifting underneath the layers of fabric, but not entirely concealed from a watchful eye.

Whenever she got back to her bed after talking with him, she felt mentally exhausted and could often finally find the sleep that had been eluding her. He commanded every bit of her attention. It wasn't hard to see how he had found himself unofficially in charge here. Six didn't fall for his his repeated protests about the issue. She had stopped trying to argue with him when it came up, but she'd bite her bottom lip and look away every time he said something about it. It made her wonder if he was trying to fool just her, or both of them.

One night along a particularly steep trail, she bent down to pick up a rock. He stopped beside her while she inspected it. It was a pale pink-red, rubbed shiny and smooth by the nearby river. She slipped it in her pocket and straightened up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him staring at her face, scrutinizing her as if he could undo her from her skin with just his eyes.

"Uh. What's wrong?" She tried to sound calm.

He reached out toward her and tucked her hair behind her ear. The fabric of his bandages scraped against the back of her earlobe and the hair on the back of her neck stood up and she was lost, so lost, unable to do anything but stare back at him. It was like a stick of dynamite had just exploded under her feet. Her ears rang and her heart crashed against her chest so loud she was sure he could hear it.

"This - " His gaze was so rapt and attentive that it was almost uncomfortable. "So it's true."

_The scar from the gunshots._

"Oh." She blinked, trying to slow down her racing breath. "Yes."

"And this." His fingers moved even further up her temple, and traced lightly over the scar that protruded from her hairline. The contrast between the roughness of his fingertips and how gingerly he brushed them against her skin was electrifying.

"Yeah," she cleared her throat, suddenly feeling way too warm for a late October night. "That's from - um." She tapped her thumb and finger together, trying to remember how to put her words in the right order. "Uh. It's from the surgery. To, um, get the bullets out. The doctor did a bang-up job putting my skull back together, actually. Look." She lifted her hair up, and he dropped his hand from her face, but leaned in so close that she could see the fine lines around his eyes. "It goes all the way back and then stops above my ear." She ran her finger through her hair, following the fish-hook shape along the side of her head.

"It's a bad scar." His eyes were still locked on her. She tried not to smile at his lack of sensitivity, but he was still staring at the side of her face, completely unaware. "How haven't I noticed it before?" He narrowed his eyes at her, and that strange dissecting look returned to his eyes. "Oh, I see it now. You push your hair over it and angle your head away so it's less visible." She frowned before she could stop herself.

"No, I don't."

"Yes." He took a step closer to her, so close that she had to look up to maintain eye contact with him. "You do." His eyes snapped back to her temple. "It must have been nearly point-blank," he said, wonder creeping into his voice. "I've never seen anything like this. It's a miracle that you're alive."

She shrugged. "I mean. If you want to call it that, sure. Seems like pretty shitty luck to me."

"God's plan is not always clear to us, but it exists, whether we see our place in it or not," he insisted. That was one topic they'd hashed and rehashed over several nights, and never managed to find a middle ground on. Although she couldn't understand it at all, his faith was intriguing to her. Sometimes when she talked to him about life in the wasteland, she got the bizarre and unsettling feeling that he'd been through enough to already understand how she felt without having to explain herself. Despite that, his unwavering belief was one of the things that always reminded her just how different they actually were.

He put his hands in his pockets and they resumed walking. A few minutes of silence passed before Joshua broke it again. "I heard about the shooting, of course, when I first heard about you, but I didn't quite believe it."

"Believe it." She kicked another rock and watched it skip over the path in front of her. "We're just a couple of living legends." She thought she saw him smile, but then he looked down.

"How did it happen?" His tone was steady, lacking both the fear and the sympathy that she had gotten used to receiving. She sighed.

"I don't know. They thought I was dead, so they buried me. Someone found me and dug me out of my grave. Then I woke up with all of my shit stolen and a killer headache. That's all I know. And I don't really think about what happened before that. It is what it is." Her voice came out way more bitter than she intended, but he didn't seem offended.

"And you've come this far," he mused. She didn't know whether he meant crossing the Mojave, or making it to Zion, or all of the other improbable things she'd pulled off since opening her eyes in Goodsprings. _I suppose it doesn't really matter. The answer is the same._

"I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I don't know how else to explain it."

He nodded like he was thinking hard. They turned around a sharp bend in the footpath as it wound up higher around the side of a cliff. The top of the ridge was visible now, towering above them into the sky.

"Hm," he began, his voice reverberating against the rocks. "Surely someone digging you up isn't such bad luck. That would have been convenient." Six shot him a sidelong glance. His voice was so deadpan that it took her a second to catch up with his words. _He's actually trying to joke with me._ That realization made her break into a grin.

"Oh, I'm sure you had to walk uphill both ways, too." She leaned toward him in her enthusiasm, but accidentally bumped into him. The feeling of her shoulder against his arm made her pause. She hadn't been aware of how close they had been walking. He didn't recoil, though - he just tilted his head her way and raised his eyebrows in a uniquely understated but arch manner.

"Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? You have no idea."

After that, she had absolutely no hope of wiping the stupid smile off her face. They finally rounded the curve in the path and made it to the top of the rock formation.

"Shall we return, or continue?" Joshua nodded up to the red rocks, illuminated by the moonlight.

"It doesn't really count as making it to the top if it's not all the way, right?" Six slipped past him and grabbed a suitable handhold. She climbed up the last few feet, swinging her legs over the top of the plateau. Her hands pushed into the red dirt as she rose to her feet. Joshua was right behind her, making his way up the rocks. She wondered if physical exertion like that bothered him more than he let on. _It has to._ He never seemed to shy away from doing anything because of the pain. He walked up next to her, rubbing his hands together and bringing her attention back to the view ahead of them. The sky above was a deep blue, almost black, and spread out farther than she could fully fathom.

They stood there in amicable silence, eyes roaming from the sky above them to the valley below. Six saw something moving on the top of her arm, and startled back, looking down at the bug clinging to the fabric of her sleeve. Its tiny antennae swiveled around and its wings opened flat. A flash of recognition passed through her mind.

"Hey, look." She raised her arm. "I haven't seen one of these in..." she paused. "Well, I don't know, it's been years, I guess. This one is smaller than the ones I'm used to. How do you call these here?" He narrowed his eyes and leaned over her arm.

"A moth?"

"Yep." She nodded. "That's the word." The moth stayed put. Its papery brown wings fluttered, slow and delicate. "It's kind of pretty."

"You think so?" His tone was measured as usual, but lower and softer around the edges. It made her feel something so odd; different than anything else could. Her mind drifted away for a moment, thinking about what other ways his voice could sound that she hadn't had the chance to hear yet. The moth crawled up higher on her arm, and it tugged her back to reality.

"Yeah, I guess I'm just used to the Mojave. All the animals there are huge and angry and always trying to murder me. So, this one is nice." She lifted her arm closer to her face, and the insect flew away, flickering against the night until it was gone. "Moth. Well, I learn something new every day here." She sighed. "This place is incredible. It makes you never want to leave."

"If all goes well and we secure Zion, we never will." He raised his head to watch the moth disappear into the sky. "I plan on being buried here."

"A little morbid, Joshua. But I guess I know what you mean."

And she did understand. Where a person died was probably important to him and his tribe, and he had nowhere else left to go. He didn't respond to her, and kept staring out into the distance.

"Hey, besides." She almost elbowed him before she thought better of it. "You've got me to help you now. And when I take a job, it gets done." Their eyes met again.

"I know." The simple conviction in his voice surprised her.

They turned to go. Joshua lowered himself down first, then held his hand out to her as she prepared to jump. She laughed at the unnecessary gesture. It was lifted from another time and place so different from their own, intended for another type of person so unlike her.

"If I got up here by myself, I can easily get back down, you know." She put her hands on her hips as she stared down at him.

"Of course you can." His voice was tolerant, like he was explaining something incredibly obvious. "I'm sure there are a great deal of things you can do by yourself. But it's comforting to have help sometimes, is it not?" Six shook her head. His hand was still extended to her. She stared at it, deliberating.

_Fuck it. It can't hurt._

"I guess I'll let you win this one." She took his hand. The fabric of the bandages met her palm, and she could feel the coarseness of his fingertips on the back of her hand. She jumped down onto the flat part of the rock and steadied herself with his grasp. They disentangled their hands, and she didn't look at him.

They hiked back down after spending a few more precious minutes just looking out at the view in front of them. Joshua had to have seen all of this by now, but he didn't object whenever she stopped to look at the landscape.

As they made their way back down the trail, something seemed off. She gave herself a mental once-over. Her pulse was faster than normal and her breath was shallow. Something in her stomach was tight, sort of like she was nervous, but she was beaming down at her feet as she walked. It dawned on her that she was biting the skin on the side of her thumb, and she dropped her hand. Distressingly, her stomach dropped right along with it.

_Oh no._

Finally comprehending it all was like a surge of cold water to the face. She shot Joshua a desperate sideways glance, then whipped her head back down to her feet, her mind reeling. Fortunately, he was staring off in the other direction, distracted by something else. Otherwise, the shock on her face would have been obvious.

 _What is wrong with me?_ All of the signs were there. She could have laughed at the realization if it didn't make her want to cry a little, as well.  _I've probably got the worst taste of anyone who's ever lived._

That self-scolding didn't stop the waves crashing over her, churning her until she didn't know which way was up. The skin on her temple prickled from the memory of him touching her and she couldn't help but wish that someone would just shake her, or slap her in the face. Her brain was suddenly running wild, conjuring up fantasies and betraying her. _Asshole,_ she told herself. _We're supposed to be on the same team._

She thought about what it would be like if his hands dipped lower than just her face, brushing down from her jaw to her neck. She wondered if he'd go slow, running his fingers against the skin over her pulse and murmuring in her ear until she couldn't stand it anymore and was begging for him. Maybe instead he'd just shove his hand up the inside of her thigh with no restraint, grabbing her hard enough to leave bruises, growling orders with that unstoppable zeal in his eyes - 

Maybe he'd actually like it better if she pushed him down and settled on top of him, setting her own pace and undoing him with her hands pressed against his chest. The mental image of him staring up at her, so powerful but completely at her mercy, was almost too much to bear. It was hard to tell with men sometimes - they could be surprising. She didn't think she'd mind how he wanted it, as long as it was him touching her.  _There's only one way to find out for certain._ She yanked on a loose strand of her hair, trying to untangle the whirlwind of obscene thoughts taking over her mind.

She wasn't usually timid about this sort of thing. Normally, she'd just put the moves on him and see where it went, but nothing about this was normal. As she tried to stop paying so much damn attention to how close he was to her side, she knew it wasn't going to work. _He's just different,_ she thought, disappointment enveloping her. _Come on. Get your shit together. You're smarter than this._

The rest of her time in Zion was going to be way more difficult. She tried to list things she didn't like about him, to nip it all in the bud and kill the desire rising up in her.

_He's too stubborn, too impatient, he talks like a fucking dictionary, he doesn't listen to my plans even though I'm clearly right, his boots are stupid and impractical -_

She thought about Nipton again, about all the pallid hands pierced with nails, about the cracked and exposed bone and the blood leaking from the holes that she would never unsee as long as she lived. She thought about his hand on the side of her temple again, so light and so rough at the same time. The longing didn't go away; it just all swirled together in a confusing mess that made her feel terrible and guilty on top of everything else.

Those feelings weren't going anywhere. She might as well accept them and move on. _The world isn't ending,_ she tried to calm herself down. _It's just sexual attraction. I can be professional about this. Sex never killed anyone, after all._

_Well._

She put a hand on the bridge of her nose and had to restrain herself from groaning in defeat.

"Are you all right?" Joshua was frowning down at her.

"I am..." She exhaled a long breath. "Fantastic."

"You seem agitated." He sounded like he was at an utter loss for what was going on inside her head. _That makes two of us._

"Nope. I'm fine. Never been better." She gave him a placating smile, and it looked like he almost bought it - almost.

"Well - " he searched her face like he was trying to excavate something. "We've been out here for some time. I should get you to bed."

She went to rub her face again, then stopped herself short, exasperated. Her hands fell at her sides, and she stared up at the sky, trying to calm down and stop talking before she made a fool out of herself. Fortunately, they were close to the entrance of the camp. Of course, at the last minute, Joshua stopped and turned toward her just before they crossed the stream.

"Goodnight, Six."

She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand and hoped that her face was composed enough to get through the rest of this conversation.

"More like good morning." She tilted her head toward the corner of the sky that was barely beginning to lighten. "When Waking Cloud gets mad at me over the bags under my eyes, I'm gonna blame you." That got a hint of a smile out of him.

"I'd rather you didn't. She can be protective. And," he added, "she thinks highly of you. Most people here do."

Six relaxed a little. This was just pleasantries and she knew what to say; they were easy enough to navigate.

"That's nice of you to say. I like everyone here, too. They've been very kind to me. I just hope I don't overstay my welcome."

He gave her a perplexing glance.

"You're welcome here as long as you like. You've been a good friend to us."

"I appreciate that. I guess it's almost time for me to go, though." There was so much left to do, she reminded herself, thinking about the platinum chip tucked against her chest. This was a good temporary retreat from her problems, but they'd still be waiting for her once she got back to New Vegas.

His eyebrows drew up, and he pressed his mouth into a line underneath the bandages. The sharp shift in his demeanor was impossible to miss.

"Right."

It seemed like he had something else to add, but he didn't continue, and the empty space hung between them. She scuffed the ground with the side of her boot, and looked back up at the sky. Her eyes felt entirely too heavy to stay open for much longer.

"Right. Okay. I'm going to go pass out until Follows-Chalk jumps on me in a few hours. Until next time." She nodded her head and set off toward the camp, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder at him. They never walked back in together. It was like some kind of unspoken agreement between them that it would be a bad idea.

 _This whole thing is a bad idea,_ she told herself, but as she walked back to her bed, she realized she was already thinking about a good scar story to tell him tomorrow night. 


	16. XVI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: graphic descriptions of violence

Joshua could have sworn that Six hadn't moved a single muscle in at least ten minutes. He couldn't even see her breathe, and it was as impressive as it was disturbing. She was lying on her stomach with her elbows propped up on the edge of an overhang, holding a pair of binoculars up to her eyes. Her neck craned down at the people that he heard rustling on the rocks below them. They had been observing the bridge in this valley for almost half an hour, and he was starting to get restless. He stood behind her, arms crossed, silently castigating himself for whatever had compelled him to do this.

"Isn't this fun?" She squinted against the lens. "We both get to be bored and miserable."

 _Bored, certainly. Miserable - perhaps not._ There were far more objectionable things he could be doing.

 

Earlier that afternoon, he was taken aback to see Six approach him during the day. To make it worse, she stepped in the cavern so quietly that he didn't realize she was there until he looked up and saw her fidgeting with her helmet.

"Daniel told me to come ask you for help with clearing the bridge," she said, lifting her palms up in a half-shrug. "Waking Cloud's busy taking care of some sick people. I told him I could handle it alone, but he threatened to come get you himself if I didn't do it."

"Why can't one of the Sorrows help you?" He tapped his pencil on the inventory list he had been going over. He was usually called upon to personally lead the more difficult slaughters, but this didn't sound like it was of critical importance.

"I..." She rubbed the back of her neck. "I can't talk to them well enough by myself. At least not about important stuff. I need Waking Cloud to translate."

"With all the time you spend with them, surely they've taught you something?" He frowned up at her, tapping the pencil faster. She bit her lip and tried not to look guilty.

"Mostly just cuss words."

He looked down with resignation. She leaned forward and put her hand on the desk, seemingly unaware that he already made up his mind.

"Daniel's really been on my ass lately. Just this one thing, and I'll never ask you for anything ever again," she pleaded.

"It's best not to make promises we can't keep." He shut the notebook in front of him. "Get your things together. We don't want to waste time. It's afternoon already."

The shock on her face was muted, but still evident.

"You expected it to be more difficult," he said.

She tapped a finger on her mouth.

"Honestly? Yeah."

At times, he felt he was more simple than she seemed to think. _We're nearly friends now,_ he thought, as he watched her collect her helmet from his desk. He didn't have many friends these days, but there were very few reasons he'd say no to helping one.

He didn't know what else to call whatever was between them. It had certainly progressed beyond their initial agreement. The idea of becoming friends with her troubled him a little, but the reality didn't. Their conversation flowed more easily now, and he was always pleased to see her, even when he just glimpsed her face across the camp for a few moments. He never would have predicted it, but he enjoyed spending time with her, even when they weren't shooting at anyone. With every passing day, the prospect of her leaving both drew nearer and grew more unpleasant.

 

"Oh. Wait. Here they come." Six pulled her rifle in front of her and settled back into position, twitching her hips from side to side like a cat preparing to pounce on its prey. It was an idiosyncrasy of hers that he couldn't help but notice whenever she fired from a prone position. He wondered who taught her to shoot. It wasn't particularly good form.

She pressed the butt of the rifle against her shoulder, and at once, every single muscle in her body relaxed, smooth and controlled. It was practiced - she must have been doing it for years. His eyes trailed between her shoulder blades and down along the arch of her spine. The button on one of her back pockets was loose, hanging by a thread against her thigh.

The rifle cracked. It took him a moment to realize she had turned back around and was looking up at him over her shoulder. A single black curl fell over her face.

"Did it hit?"

He looked at the narrow valley in front of them. Whoever she was aiming at wasn't even in his line of sight.

"I don't know."

"You're supposed to be watching the target," she sulked. "What are you even doing back there?"

He elected not to say anything. She picked the binoculars back up and peered through them. "He's down. Don't know about the others. How about this - I'll climb up the cliff and check it out, and you wait here."

He scoffed, and she turned back around.

"You're...not gonna be here when I get back, are you?"

"Not a chance."

"Ugh." She dropped her head and ran her hand through her hair in frustration. "Come up to the top with me, then."

"I don't remember when you became my superior. We'll go down the hill." She dropped the binoculars entirely and rolled her eyes.

They had no warning. A bullet punctured the air, passing right next to her head. Instantly, she flattened against the ground. Joshua ducked down and saw it strike the rock a few feet to his side, fracturing a hole in the stone. She looked back at him, and, God help them both, a smile curved across her face. It was sly, like she was sharing a joke only they knew about. Her eyes were wide with exhilaration from the near-miss. The dissonance of the situation made it enticing even as it sent an icy chill down his spine. As soon as he saw it, it was gone. She pulled the helmet over her head and dragged herself behind a rock, breathing hard.

"Okay." She tightened the rifle strap against her chest. "I'm a little more open to your plan now."

They made their way back down a side path at an excruciatingly slow pace to keep from being heard. Once they finally made it down, they crouched behind an area with thick foliage to hide in. A group of White Legs gathered at the opposite end of the bridge, still searching for them.

"There's only four more," she whispered. "Not bad. Okay...see that crashed bus? Let's get behind there."

"Fine. Don't expect me to hold my fire." He checked his pockets for the extra magazines he brought and pictured the glare she was probably giving him underneath her helmet.

"Fine. Deal."

Six was quiet enough that she got the first shot. The man in the front of the group was face down with his kneecap removed before any of the White Legs knew they were even there. Aiming for the leg was a favored tactic of hers, he noticed, to gruesome effect. She spun the pistol around her finger and ducked behind the bus as they shouted and scrambled to figure out what happened.

"Three more," she announced.

"Now you're just showing off," he grumbled in her ear.

"Me? Showing off?" She leaned into his side so he could hear her. "Never. Now are we gonna do this or what?"

They both leaned around the corner, and she aimed at someone reloading a rifle. He aimed down his sights at the same person and pulled the trigger before her. The exasperated noise she made was audible, even over the gunfire. 

"Be faster."

"Two," she counted begrudgingly.

Something landed next to them, and before he could react, Six scooped it off the ground and threw it back. It exploded in the air above them.

"Watch out," he urged her. "We need to move."

Another bottle bomb landed close to her, but she didn't react. He yanked her collar and they reeled backwards. She tried to twist out of his grasp, but he kept pulling her back, harder, until he turned her around in front of him.

"What the fuck was that - "

"They're throwing fire bombs now," he said. "We can't throw those back. We just have to avoid them." The flames were licking the ground next to the bus where they had been standing.

"Oh. Don't need to tell me twice." They rushed around to the other side of the bus that was further from the encampment. She pushed her fingers up between her collar and her helmet, and rubbed her throat.

"Are you injured?"

"Just my dignity."

He replaced the magazine in his gun. "You don't listen. Moving you myself is less trouble for us both." She just looked up at him, seemingly frozen, with the empty magazine still in her hand. "Let's go," he urged. She snapped out of whatever trance she had been in, and finished reloading the gun.

They made their way to the bridge by pushing forward and firing as fast as possible with no cover. Despite his earlier provocation, she really was quick enough to cover him comfortably. As they stepped out onto the bridge, a bullet tore past his head. He raised his gun at the man shooting at him and fired into his stomach. He fell against the wooden planks of the bridge. Bright blood pooled around him and dripped through the slats.

"Uh..." Six pointed her gun down and fired a shot at the man's head. _Conscientious as always._ "That should do it." She stepped around the body. "One more."

The gunfire and screaming had stopped entirely. They stepped across the bridge, but hesitated at the end. Six turned to him.

"Where is he?" 

"No idea. Let's keep moving." 

There was a small cabin next to the bridge. She pushed the wooden door open, and it groaned, echoing throughout the building. The entry corridor was silent, and she leaned around the first doorway, gun drawn. She sprang back, and he heard a crash against the doorway where she had been standing. The old wood of the wall caved in and splintered. He shoved past her and saw a man recovering his balance from swinging the axe in his hands, and realized he was out of bullets. Within a split second, he turned the pistol around and smashed the man across the face with the grip. The bones of his face broke inward with a gratifying crunch against the side of his hand. Blood and teeth sprayed onto the floor. He struck him again, and the man fell down in front of him with a muffled thump. 

"Holy shit," Six gasped behind him. He turned to her and gave her a once-over. She was unharmed, but he thought he might have seen her hands trembling slightly. 

"Finish it." He stared at the broken body on the ground, and she walked past him back into the doorway. Two more gunshots, and everything was still once again. 

As they regrouped and checked the rest of the cabin, it occurred to him that he didn't know whether she was shaken because she was almost hit, or because of how he reacted to it.

 

The building wasn't large enough to store much, but Joshua was concerned about destroying any potential caches so that more White Legs couldn't come back and use them. They found materials for making fire bombs, and disposed of the gasoline by pouring it out. It was unfortunate that they had to pollute the ground with it, but that was the price of added security. Six found a wooden crate and began to fill it with boxes of bullets. Joshua picked through a supply cabinet, and froze when his hand fell on a loop of silver wire.

He cupped the wire in his palms and ran his thumb along it. For a moment, it was the only thing he could see. 

"What's that?" Six's voice pulled him out of his reverie.

"Have you ever seen the inside of a piano?"

"Nope. I've only seen people playing them in the casinos. Never got a look up close." She undid the buttons along her wrist.

"There are wires inside that move when you press the keys."

"Weird." She tugged her gloves off and tilted her head. "So...what's up?"

He swallowed and picked at the wire, loosening it from the roll.

His men used to string piano wire up between posts to decapitate NCR officers n their open-top trucks. Vehicles weren't common, but every once in a while, the NCR used small ones to transport a few officers at a time, often high-ranking. It was his own idea. They did it on the main streets of occupied towns, where everyone could witness the blood pooling in the dust. It had pleased Caesar so much that he ordered the rest of the units to start doing it, too. The White Legs likely intended to string the wires across the bridge to prevent them from fleeing. The Sorrows would have been sitting ducks for slaughter, not aware of the obstruction until it was too late. Most assuredly, they had adopted this tactic from the Legion. _And this is my legacy,_ he thought. _This is the fruit of my deeds._

He hesitated, rolling the wire between his fingers. The moment was hung before him on a string. Her eyes were still focused on him, waiting for his answer.

"I used to play piano when I was younger." His fingers clenched the end of the wire so hard that it bit into his skin. _You coward,_ the pain coursing through his hand told him. Her reaction brought him only shallow relief.

"Really?" She leaned her elbow on the counter behind her, but kept her gaze on him.

It was the truth. It just wasn't the entire truth. He thought about the house in New Canaan, and the hazy memories he had of sitting on a bench with his mother while she smoothed sheet music out in front of them. The light would filter through the gauzy white curtains in the room, and she'd always get up and open them halfway through their practice to let more sunlight in. She'd explain that music was a gift: a way to draw the Spirit closer to him.

He was never listening to that part as well as he should have been. Even though his hands were too small to reach all of the keys at first, the way they moved fascinated him. When he was older, before he left, he'd play at the dances in the meetinghouse - they had the best piano in town, and he'd never turn down an opportunity to get his hands on it.

Besides, at that age, the thought of actually asking anyone else to dance made him shake with terror. Keeping to the piano in the corner was easier. The elders who supervised the dances used to come over to him in between songs and confess that he was much better-behaved than his older brothers had been. Apparently, they always tried to dance too close with the girls.

"You're a good son. You honor your parents," they'd say in hushed tones, in between bites of cake.

Joshua closed his hand around the wire. "My mother taught me how. She'd play in the chapel during our services." He looked up, and Six was staring at him with a strange look on her face.

"Yes?" He asked her.

"Nothing." She blinked. "I don't know. It's neat. Can you still play?" He looked down at his hands. The bandages were smudged with blood and dirt, and beginning to fray from where he had been holding his gun all day.

"I'd imagine not. Practice is important for those sorts of things, and I haven't touched one since I was young."

The wrinkle between her eyebrows was back, and her lips parted slightly, and he realized that he must have been unable to disguise the gloom in his voice.

"I'll find a piano somewhere." She waved her glove at him in enthusiasm. "Even if it's broken, I could fix it. No problem." The earnest determination on her face made him feel better than just about anything else could. There was no telling what could have possibly motivated her, but he was grateful nonetheless. 

"You didn't even know what piano wire was. How are you going to fix one?"

"I'll learn," she declared, like it was all so simple. That was her answer to every problem. _I'll learn. I can do it. I'll make it work._ It was incredible. _Someday, it won't be enough,_ he thought, staring at the the hard line of her shoulders, set back in resolve. There wasn't a piano in all of Zion, and he knew that, but somehow he doubted it would stop her from searching for one.

"Thank you," he said anyway. "I'd like that."

She looked back down at the gloves in her hand, and wiped them off on her pants.

"Sure. It's nothing." She put her hand on the crate to her side. "So, do we wanna head back to the camp now?"

He looked out the window. The sky was already getting dark, and the thought of walking back through hostile territory with no light didn't appeal to him.

"We could just stay the night here."

"Oh no." The words escaped out of her mouth fast. She lifted her hand off of the crate, and straightened up. "I mean, we better not. We're not supposed to stay away from camp, right? It's kind of dangerous." He leaned back on the cabinet a little.

"That didn't seem to concern you before."

She shifted her weight from side to side and tugged on the end of a curl that had fallen out by her ear.

"I learned my lesson. I'm on the straight and narrow now. So, can we please go back?"

"If that's what you want." He spoke more slowly, and she tugged on her hair faster.

"It really is." She stared at him for a second longer than was natural, and then hastily turned around to pick up the crate.

He puzzled over her odd behavior as he helped her gather up the extra supplies they had pulled out earlier. They were more comfortable with each other now, or so he thought, but sudden small things seemed to make her nervous. That problem distracted him until he picked up the roll of piano wire, and hesitated for a moment.

He threw it in the crate to bring along. There was no use in leaving it behind. _We might need it._  They could use it to set some kind of trap, perhaps. He would stop at nothing to see those who acted against God destroyed. That was the only reason he was still here on this Earth.

 

 

Night had fallen by the time they reached the camp. Almost everyone else was already asleep. They dropped the crate next to a smaller fire on the edge of the camp. Six had insisted on carrying it back, despite the fact that it was large enough to block her vision.

"Well." She stretched her arms behind her back. "I'm actually tired. I guess I should thank Daniel after all."

Joshua stoked the fire and listened to the sound of her unbuckling her chestplate. He kept his back turned and piled more wood on the fire until it was blazing too high, and he had nothing left to do, and he had to turn back around.

With the bulky armor off, she looked smaller, but still obviously strong. An extensive dark bruise bloomed from under the sleeve of her shirt, in relief against the muscle of her shoulder.

"The big guns kick, you know." She pointed at her arm with a lopsided smile. Several more bruises dotted her arms; from deep bloody violets to fading greens and yellows. Sweat soaked through the neck of her white t-shirt, plastering it taut along her collarbones, an interesting visual contrast to the way it draped over the soft curve of her waist.

"I know that." The back of his neck was pinching from holding it so tense. Unease washed over him. He tore his eyes away from her shoulder and looked back at her face. "I thought you were going to sleep." She shrugged.

"I guess I'll stay up a little. I need to get some repairs done, anyway. One of those guys shot a hole straight through my coat."

She pulled her hair back, then tugged her coat onto her lap and produced a small box from one of the pockets. The needle went between her lips, balancing against the delicate corner of her mouth as she unspooled her thread and leaned over to begin sewing.

The more he paid attention to her, the more her mannerisms fascinated him. They were assertive, but quietly confident instead of showy. Her body commanded every inch of space she took up. The way she moved was always fluid and controlled, whether she was firing a gun or threading a needle. It was a pleasure to watch her do just about anything.

He heard the wood crackle, and stared back into the fire. He hadn't eaten yet tonight, but he'd wait until she went to bed. Taking meals was one thing he always did alone. Usually, he also prayed alone right before dinner, but the time felt right. He folded his hands and tipped his head forward. It wasn't unusual for him to pray for a long time, most often when he was struggling, but tonight, he knew what he wanted to say. It was short enough.

He thanked his Heavenly Father for this day, for the Dead Horses, for the Sorrows, for the New Canaanites, and for her. He asked for strength to be an instrument of God's will, and for forgiveness for all he had done.

He raised his head, and Six was staring at him.

"Sorry," she said quickly, and looked back down at her coat.

"You have nothing to apologize for," he assured her. "If I had wanted to be alone, I would have left."

The firelight played over her face as she looked back up at him. Recently, she had been slipping into his prayers more frequently. When his thoughts settled on her, he typically asked God for help on her behalf - he asked for her injury not to trouble her too much, and that she would live a long life, and that God would guide her on all the roads she would walk after this one. _She'd hate it if she knew._ He had to, though. It was important.

"Can I ask you something?" Her voice was halting.

"Of course."

She paused for a moment, then moved closer to him on the bench. With her hair up, he could clearly see the scar on her temple. It seemed that she had stopped putting so much effort into hiding it. He looked back at her eyes, so lively in the glow from the fire. Her shoulders opened up toward him so that they were nearly facing each other. She leaned to the side and reached into her pocket like she was fishing around for something, and her knee gently pressed into the side of his leg. The pain was secondary to the warmth he felt radiating through him. She leaned forward even further, still searching through her pocket, and his eyes fell on a tiny scar right below her bottom lip. A forceful urge flashed through his mind to run his finger along it.

"I have - "

"There you are."

She jolted back, and they broke apart. The place where she had been touching him felt cold and empty. He leaned back. Follows-Chalk strolled up to them from the other side of the fire, looking relieved. "I've been looking for you all day. We're taking the Sorrows to the North Fork tomorrow, remember?"

"I remember," she said, and for a second, she sounded as displeased as Joshua felt. Then, she turned to Follows-Chalk and gave him a bland smile. "I don't know if Waking Cloud is coming. She may still be busy."

"Eh, she has to come. I don't know if we can do it without her." Follows-Chalk looked up further and his eyes widened, like he was just realizing he was there, too. "Oh, Joshua, hello."

"Hello." He didn't intend his voice to sound so gruff, but it did anyway.

"What are you doing out here?" Follows-Chalk looked back and forth between them.

"I was just going," he said, and stood up. "Goodnight to both of you." He picked up the crate from beside the fire and dug his fingers into the handles to distract himself from the pain in his back.

"Goodnight!" Follows-Chalk chirped.

"Goodnight." Six's voice was flat.

He knew he'd probably see her again soon and they could finish their conversation later, but for some reason, he still felt irritated. _We're friends,_ he told himself again as he set the crate down in the cavern. _We'll talk soon._ It was an unfortunate time and they were all busy, but if she wanted to see him, they'd find their way to one other somehow. It had worked out that way so far, and as he took the scissors off of the table and began to cut the bandages off of his hands, he assured himself that it was enough. 


	17. XVII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for general Legion bastardry: slavery, sexual assault, violence. Nothing is explicit, just mentioned and implied.
> 
> Can y'all tell it's time for a flashback?

Joshua sat by the fire, rubbing his palms on his knees and staring into the flames. He leaned forward, unable to stop thinking about where he ought to put his hands. It had been a week since he met the pair of Followers that he was supposed to be assisting. The week before he left, he could hardly go to sleep at night with the excitement churning in his mind from thinking about all of the new places he was going to see outside of the walls of New Canaan. Now, he missed those walls more than he had expected. Nearly every morning that week, he woke up with a jolt and wondered where he was until he looked over at the sleeping figures in the tent next to him and remembered.

That morning was cold, and he could see his breath clouding around him. The nerves in his stomach made him decide to say a quick prayer. He folded his hands and bowed his head forward.

"Are you sure you don't want something to drink?" Bill offered a mug out to him. Joshua lifted his head back up and gave it a slight shake. He knew Bill didn't realize what he was doing and hadn't intended to be rude. Most outsiders weren't very familiar with his customs.

"I can't -"

"He can't drink coffee," Edward talked over him as he breezed out of the tent behind them. He held his pants up around his hips with one hand. "We know, we heard you the first five times you said it."

He stopped and tossed a couple of books next to Joshua's feet, then zipped his pants up.

"Can you read these?"

Joshua picked them up carefully and leafed through the pages, keeping his touch light on the old paper.

"Partially," he answered, frowning down at the words. "It's Latin. I only know a little." 

"Teach me." The fire next to them popped. Edward placed a cigarette between his lips, letting it dangle from the corner of his mouth. 

"But I can't -"

"Yeah, yeah. You can't understand it all. I got that part. Help me with what you can. I already know some, too." He lifted his lighter and tilted his head as he lit the cigarette. "Let's start tonight after we make camp."

Joshua blinked back up at him in surprise. Edward had seemed determined to make this past week as hellish as possible for him. He was vulgar, relentlessly picking at him with crude jokes and relishing it when he goaded Joshua into losing his temper. Every time Edward started talking to him, Bill looked wary, like a bomb was about to go off.

Whenever Joshua finally erupted and slammed his fist down, or threw whatever he was holding against a wall, Edward looked both gleeful and afraid, like a man who chases down a storm just for the deviant pleasure of watching it destroy everything in its path.

"Okay," Joshua said, after a moment of hesitation.

"Okay." He waved his hand dismissively and took the pot off the fire to pour himself a mug. "Go ahead. Don't let me interrupt your little chat with Jesus."

He walked away to do only God knew what, and Joshua stared at his back as he ducked underneath the branches of the pine trees around their camp. Even back then, Edward was subtly odd like that: one minute, he made the world stop and pay attention as if he were the center of it all; the next, he was wandering off by himself, distracted and silent like he'd been overtaken with some irrepressible idea that he could only work out alone. Edward left, but the cigarette and coffee smell stayed long after, mingling with the cold morning air, smoke and steam and breath all drifting up together into the vast sky above them.

 

"Caesar non supra grammaticos," Joshua said later that night, pausing to glare at Edward when he realized his eyes had wandered off of the conjugations in front of him.

"I don't know what you're saying, but please, go on. I like how it sounds," Edward grinned.

"Ex nihilo nihil fit."

"I think you pronounced that wrong."

"Docendo discimus."

"You've kind of got a stick up your ass, you know that?"

Joshua looked down, flipping idly through the stack of pages in front of him.

"I'm not familiar with that one. Is it from Cicero?"

"Oh," Edward jabbed his finger at him. "So the truth comes out. You do have a sense of humor after all."

Joshua paused, his finger still resting on the paper.

"Come on, kid. I'm just fucking with you," Edward leaned back, a wicked smile spreading across his face as his eyes roved all over him. "Jesus, look at you. You have maybe half a foot on me, and you look like a scared little rabbit. How old are you, anyway?"

"I'm eighteen," he replied, keeping his eyes down on the page.

"Uh…" Edward stroked his chin and pointed his finger at him again. "Bullshit."

Joshua's mouth went dry.

"I'll be eighteen later this year," he mumbled.

Edward gave a low whistle like he was impressed, and rocked back in his chair. Under his gaze, Joshua was practically squirming in his own seat.

"You lied, didn't you? I know about your traditions. I know you're supposed to wait until you're eighteen to do this whole mission thing."

"But I will be," he protested. Edward's laughter boomed. It was incongruous, much louder than it should have been. Then again, everything he did had an overblown quality to it.

"Still a lie, my friend. And lying is a sin, right? I don't know your God that well, but I don't think He's gonna let you slide on a technicality." He crossed his arms. "And here I thought you were such a goody-goody. Maybe we'll get along better than I thought. Let's call it a day. We'll do this again tomorrow night?"

Edward was the type of person who always said his questions like he already knew the answer, but that question was inflected like a real one.

"Yes," Joshua answered.

That night, when he laid down to sleep, his thoughts raced until his head was buzzing with Latin words and Edward's laugh. He forgot to say his prayers.

 

 

The first tribe they met gave them a warm welcome after seeing all of the medical supplies they had to trade. The day had been filled with shuttling around between the tribal leaders, who surveyed them with imperious eyes. Joshua had tried to keep his voice from shaking as he translated between them and the rest of his group.

However, the night was getting increasingly rowdy. It seemed that the whole tribe was there, laughing and drinking. Edward and Bill were across the room, trying to speak with some of the women. Joshua sat on a bench against the wall, tapping his fingers on his knees and watching the crowd.

"And she wasn't interested," Edward sighed, sitting down on the bench next to Joshua. "Oh look, she's making eyes at you instead. Of course, handsome bastard that you are." He slung an arm around Joshua's shoulders and took a drink. The wine sloshed over the rim of the cup, and left a dark red splatter on his pants. Joshua lifted his gaze to the blonde girl Edward was pointing at. Their eyes met, and he looked down immediately, feeling a flush start to creep up his face.

"Have some finesse. What's the matter with you?" He picked a cup of wine off of the table next to them. "And you're not even a little bit drunk. We should fix that. Have a drink."

"I can't." Joshua said.

"That's all I ever hear out of you," Edward rolled his eyes. "I can't, I can't, I can't. How about this: you can."

"But that's not how it works."

"Sure it is." Edward put his cup down. "You don't need permission." He leaned in closer, and his voice got more serious. The acrid smell of the wine wafted off of his breath. "Joshua. Out here? This is freedom. It's okay to do what you want - whatever you really want." The torchlight flickered across his face, and Joshua realized his eyes weren't brown at all like he had originally thought. In the light, they were actually green. Edward leaned back and clapped him on the shoulder again, a little too hard.

"Ah, maybe next time, right? Let's get out of here. I'm starting to get a headache."

"Of course." Joshua's eyes traveled over his red face and his disheveled shirt. He stood and offered his hand, and Edward cocked an eyebrow in surprise before laughing again and taking it as Joshua helped him to his feet.

"Next time!" He shook his finger in the air.

"Next time," Joshua agreed. The hum in his head was louder as they slipped through the side door. Edward stumbled over his feet and fell into Joshua's side more than once.

"Joshua, Joshua, Joshua," he babbled, right before they crawled into their tent. Joshua's pulse quickened.

"Yes?"

"Ha," he smirked and lifted his hands. "The great conqueror of Canaan. Your parents must have wanted you to be a soldier." Joshua didn't look at him, and opened the flap to the tent. It wasn't true. His father hoped he'd return from his mission and marry right away, and maybe someday be called to serve as a bishop. He had a suspicion that his mother didn't mind what he did, as long as he was happy and continued to play music.

"They just liked the name," he said, steering Edward through the opening. "And I have five brothers. I imagine they were running out of ideas."

Edward whistled and stripped off his coat. His movements were shaky, and he swayed to one side.

"Five? Christ. That's too many."

"I didn't really grow up with them. They're all much older than me."

Edward crashed down onto his sleeping roll, and twisted around on his back. He jerked his thumb at himself.

"In my family, it's just me." The lighthearted sarcasm in his voice swelled, like he was determined to suppress any genuine emotion. "I'm a poor, solitary only child."

"Well, obviously."

Edward groped for the discarded coat next to him and launched it at Joshua.

"Asshole," he grouched, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Now lay down, will you? You're giving me a headache from staring up at you."

He shook his head and crouched down, folding back the corner of his sleeping bag before sliding into it as quietly as he could. Even in the dark, he felt Edward's eyes on him, like he was being studied carefully. It was silent for a few moments before Edward leaned up on his elbow, absently pulling at a thread on his blanket.

"Latin tomorrow?" Edward asked. Uncharacteristically, his voice held an edge of doubt. Joshua stared up at the top of the tent.

"Yes."

Instead of a response, Edward rolled back over and faced the wall. His unsteady breathing gradually evened out into a rhythmic snore. The noise made it difficult for him to fall asleep that night. At the time, Joshua had no idea how many nights he would come to pass with that sound in the background. Eventually, he would grow used to it. Time had a way of narrowing down the world to that which was right in front of him, dampening the sharp edges of many things he initially found disagreeable.

 

 

"The men are all dead, Legate." The decanus removed his helmet and bowed his head. "We kept some of the boys, but these profligates didn't have much among them of worth."

The group of legionaries stood immobile in a half-circle, all eyes on him. They were on edge, restless with their fresh victory, but they were waiting for him to give his command. They wouldn't dare move a muscle without his permission.

"Good." Joshua pulled a rag out of his pocket and wiped his hands off. The mingled blood and sweat stained it a ghastly pink. "We're finished here, then."

"Thank you, Legate." The decanus dipped his head respectfully, and the group began to murmur to one another.

One of the men looked down. "Go ahead. Take one."

He looked down at the women cowering on the floor - the debris of a tribe he'd just wiped off the map. He thought about Edward. Lately, he stopped staying with the men after battle. They would work themselves into a raucous frenzy, enjoying the spoils of war, but Edward would usually slip back to his tent when no one was looking, wanting to be alone, already thinking ahead and planning their next move. They were rolling across Utah like a dark, thunderous cloud, and their conquest seemingly could not be stopped, but Joshua suspected Edward was growing weary of mere slaughter and pillaging, and his sights were beginning to fixate on something grander.

"I'll be returning to camp. We'll convene tomorrow." He slid his gun into the holster. The throng of women quaked, staring at him as he spoke. Even though they didn't understand what he was saying, it must have been obvious he was in charge of their fates. He took his time at folding the rag and neatly placing it back in his pocket, drawing out the moment, wringing every drop of fear out of them and drinking it up in satisfaction.

"Sometimes, I swear, Legate," a coarse laugh erupted out of the man's mouth, but his tone stayed deferential. "It's like you're not even a man at all."

He meant it as a compliment. They said that about him in sometimes, surveying his cold, methodical nature with awe or fear. At times, it was difficult to tell the two apart. He looked down at his hands, and saw that he had missed a drying streak of blood in between two of his knuckles. He rubbed his thumb along it until it cracked and flaked off.

"Come on," a man jeered, "let's celebrate, then." Several of the women wailed again. Some were holding their breath so as not to make any sobbing sounds. One woman glared at him, the age lines on her face creased even deeper with her fierce grimace. He surveyed them all with detached disinterest, waved his hand for the legionaries to continue, and walked away.

The stars that night were hidden behind a tumultuous string of clouds, swept forward by the wind. Joshua went behind the largest tent in the center of the encampment. A silhouetted figure stood against the sky, staring down the side of the hill.

"Legate," the man said without turning around.

"Caesar."

Then, the rigid line of his shoulders slackened, and his grave tone broke. In private, they could never call each other by their titles. It felt like two children putting on their parents' clothes and playing make believe. Out of all of the other commanders, Joshua was always just different. Of course, that changed later. Everything did.

"Are you going to stand around all night? Come here, Joshua."

He did as he was told and stepped beside him. Edward didn't look at him, but kept his eyes on the sky above them.

"Everything went okay?"

"Yes. Less resistance than usual."

"I heard. The messengers said it was easy, even for you. Our reputation precedes us." 

Joshua stared up at the filmy glow of the moon as the clouds rolled across the sky. Edward shifted his glance to him and sighed.

"So damn serious. Most people cheer up after the carnage is over." The edges of his voice curled up in amusement. "Then again, I think you have your real fun during." 

Although it was already clean, Joshua rubbed the spot between his knuckles again. Even after several years, being around Edward still threw him off balance. His mind buzzed louder.

"There's a faction that wants you gone, you know," Edward's voice was suddenly sharp, jabbing at a familiar button that instantly set Joshua on edge. "Your continued success in battle is the only reason they haven't openly petitioned for it yet."

"I don't care."

"It's like you're not even making an effort to cooperate with the other members of the command. They respect me. They're just afraid of you."

"I don't care about them."

"You should."

His hands bunched up into fists, and even after such a long day, his voice lowered with the rage beginning to crawl through his veins.

"The games they want to play don't bother me. I'm here. That's all that matters."

"Ah," one corner of Edward's mouth twitched up, finally sated after finding what he was digging for. "Sometimes I think you really haven't changed at all since the day I met you."

In the valley below them, a few fires sparked up. Edward tilted his chin out toward them. The men were making camp for the night among what remained of the tribe they had destroyed.

"Igne natura renovatur integra," Edward commented as the blazes climbed higher.

Joshua watched the fires burn. Usually, he was at least momentarily satisfied after a long day's work, but something was off today. In earlier years, he might have said a prayer to calm his thoughts. He'd never tell anyone, especially not Edward, but every once in a while, in the dead of night when no one else was awake, he folded his hands and struggled to pray again. He could even remember a time when he used to receive a response. Now, he only ever felt a numbing silence. He couldn't even explain to himself why he tried. It was useless to hold on to forgotten habits of a time in his life he'd long buried.

Edward turned to him with a wry smile. Joshua saw a crease next to his mouth, and for a moment he was lost staring at it, wondering how the past years could have slipped by him so quickly. 

"You're dismissed, Legate."

"Vale." He didn't move from Edward's side, and they both returned their gazes to the fires. 


	18. XVIII

The wet strands of hair clinging against the side of Six's neck sent a shiver down her spine, and her face prickled against the chilling wind. Although she was glad to be clean, she seriously regretted jumping in the first deep water she saw. When she arrived in Zion, the water was tolerable, but seemingly overnight, it turned ice-cold.

This was the first spare moment she'd gotten in a few days to stop and wash her clothes, and even in the quiet stream, her noisy mind wouldn't stop turning. She was thinking about her friends back home less and less, and she brushed away that mild guilt like an insect. Six was rootless, more at home in between places than inside of them, and her attachments were brittle, prone to wither up when she stopped watering them. _It's easier that way,_ she'd thought, sinking her mouth and nose under the water with a meditative air, watching the tendrils of her hair float on top of the water. After long enough, the ice-cold sharpness even started to feel good - numbing - for Six, the best kind of good there was. 

After she'd dried off and left the water, she hoisted the basket in her arms higher, and over the top of the clothes she saw a figure waving at her further down the river.

"Oh, hey." Six waved back as Follows-Chalk approached her. She set the basket on the ground. "What are you doing up here?"

"We came over to trade some supplies with Daniel. He has most of the medical things." He looked over his shoulder back up the hill. "Oh, Joshua's here too, and I think he wants to talk to you." His eyes widened. "But watch out. He's not in a good mood." 

She looked down and loosened a rock from the riverbank with her foot.

"Nothing that I can't handle, I'm sure."

Follows-Chalk sucked his breath in through his teeth. He still seemed nervous every time they came within ten feet of each other, like something bad was going to happen. She lifted the basket back up, and he scrambled to take the other side until she waved him off and wrapped her arms around it. 

They walked up the hill and Follows-Chalk rambled excitedly about the Yao Guai cubs he saw on his last scouting expedition. 

"Sounds like someone should go take the nest out. I have a strong feeling that someone will end up being me."

He turned to her, mouth open with indignation.

"What? No, they were cute!"

"They won't be cute when they grow up." She tilted her head and raised the basket up higher against her hip.

"They're just babies," he complained. "Have a heart."

"Yeah, and their mother would tear yours out if she had half a chance." He huffed at her and crossed his arms.

The clamor of cooking pots and voices greeted them as they came over the crest of the hill. She walked over to the lines the Sorrows had strung up to hang their hides on. Dancing Flame was sitting on the ground and scraping a hide clean, so she gave him a tiny wave and set the basket down. Like Waking Cloud, he seemed to be one of the Sorrows who held an unofficial sort of authority in the camp. When she first started working with him, she thought his grim expression and curt manner meant he didn't like her, but now she realized he was just a serious person. They couldn't communicate seamlessly, but between their three languages, they could usually work out something resembling a conversation.

"Hi, Courier Six," he said. "Today's busy?"

"Yes. Very." She turned to Follows-Chalk and pointed at the hide on the ground.

"That's your friend right there."

His eyes widened and he gasped.

"Stop it!" He tried to slap her arm, and she ducked out of the way. In the tribal language, he explained to Dancing Flame what they were laughing about, and Dancing Flame listened, rolling his hunting knife between his palms. Then, he pointed it at Six, and spoke in halting English.

"She is right. A good hunter knows to kill, or they kill you."

"Told you. And I trust his opinion." Six grinned, and Follows-Chalk stuck his tongue out at her. She turned to Dancing Flame and thanked him. He went back to cleaning the hide with one corner of his mouth turned up in amusement.

She bent over the basket and hung one of the wet shirts over the line, preparing to toss another comment over her shoulder, but the sound of laughter and chatter abruptly died down behind her.

"Hi." Follows-Chalk waved as Joshua joined their group. Dancing Flame said something in the tribal language, and Joshua replied to him. She pointedly avoided looking at him and reached back into the basket for the next shirt.

His voice drifted up and down, sonorous as always. As far as she could tell, he was completely fluent in both the Sorrows and the Dead Horses' dialects. She didn't know much about the tribes before she came here, but occasionally, small groups of refugees found their way to Freeside after fleeing the Legion conquest from the east. It wasn't an issue she'd considered before, but if she was going to try to settle the situation in Vegas, it might be useful to recruit someone who could communicate with them.

The three of them talked among themselves for a minute, then Joshua looked to her.

"I would like a word with you." He phrased it like a request, but his tone made it a command. She straightened out the shirt in her hands.

"Okay." 

"Privately."

Her pulse started thumping against her wrists. She made herself take a deep breath before she responded.

"Sure." She haphazardly racked her brain for what he might possibly want to talk about. She tried to remember if she had broken anything important recently, but she was at a loss. This week, she'd spent most of her time up in the Narrows anyway. It had been a couple days since they'd last seen each other. _Maybe more than a couple,_ she corrected herself. _Three days._ Not that she was counting.

She took her time hanging up the next shirt on the line and tried to ignore Follows-Chalk's anxious glance in her direction. Finally, she stepped to his side and they started walking. They made it past the central campfire before she clasped her hands together and looked at him.

"Oh, wait. Is this about me and the Sorrows stealing those war totems?"

"No." He tapped his fingers on the back of his arm. "But I heard about it. Utterly ludicrous, if you ask me."

"It worked."

"Which is the only reason you aren't getting an earful from me about it." He stopped right before the entrance to the camp, and she circled around to face him.

"Then what are you giving me an earful about?"

"I have a proposal for you." His voice was low. Her shoulders straightened up higher.

"Okay. Shoot."

"It's…" his eyes flicked up to her face, and he paused. "Not part of our initial terms, and therefore voluntary on your part."

She silently begged him to hurry up and finish his sentence before she lost her mind. Lately, everything he said with that damn voice sounded like it was two seconds away from turning into some tantalizing overture. 

"Tell me." She strained to keep her voice calm, and seemingly unfazed, he removed a map from his back pocket.

"It should be routine. Not too risky."

 _Oh_ , she thought as she watched him carefully unfold it. He started going on about some ridge southwest of the Narrows, and she stared at the side of his face and reminded herself that she was truly the unluckiest person alive.Her practicality won a quick victory, as it always did, and she took a step back and assessed the reality of her situation: she had her sights on the most immovable and heartless target she'd ever met, and the odds of success weren't looking good. _Get over it already. It's not gonna happen in a million years._ She started mentally reciting the steps of field stripping a trail carbine to calm herself down and stop thinking about him. It usually worked like a charm when she needed a boring distraction.  _Take the trigger guard out of the stock, okay -_

 _No, that one's too easy - Gobi rifles. More difficult._ _Move the bolt. Remove the rear takedown pin -_

"Six," Joshua admonished. "You're not listening, are you?"

"My bad." She rubbed her eyes. "It's been a long day. Continue." She waved her hand. The look in his eyes was completely indecipherable.

"As I was saying," he resumed, with an edge of uncertainty in his voice, "the White Legs are using the cabin next to the bridge as a hideout, similar to the one you and I found. Their supply cache needs to be destroyed. There will be four or five guards. I want you to provide cover while we eliminate the storage."

"You know I'm always on board for a firefight, but it seems a little tricky to pull off with only one rifleman. Is this absolutely necessary? We don't have to take out every single cache, right?"

He stared at her with those hard blue eyes, almost like he was appraising her words.

"We have to do everything we possibly can, and I believe you understand that, too. There is no halfway. There is no compromise." He spoke slowly, his gaze never wavering, and for some indescribable reason, she felt a little like she'd said something wrong and was being scolded. "I won't force you to help us, but I'm going to destroy the cache anyway, whether you're there or not." 

She wasn't about to let that happen. One person giving them cover was better than no one.

"Okay. I'm in." 

He exhaled, and the tension in his posture relaxed slightly.

"Thank you."

"Yep. No problem." She stood on her toes and looked over his shoulder. "Now, you'll have to excuse me. I have a dinner date with our friend over there." She tilted her head toward the picnic table. Daniel was hunched over in his seat, staring into the fire. "Well, he's eating dinner, and I'm going to bother him. I'll be back in camp in a day or two, probably, and then we can sort out the details of our day trip."

"All right." Joshua's tone seemed as lackluster as possible. She looked back up at him and noticed his pupils widen, and only then did she realize how incredibly close they had been standing to one another. She took a few steps backward, and offered him a smile.

"See you later?"

"Go with God," he replied. His eyes stayed on her as she turned to leave. If she had to guess, he was probably still staring at her like his eyes could burn a hole into her back, but she didn't turn around to check as she made her way up the hill. _I'm getting used to it, anyway._

 

"Reporting for duty, captain." Six slung herself into the seat opposite Daniel. He looked up from his food, pausing with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

"Did you take care of those bear traps?"

"I almost lost my damn leg, but they're all gone. The road is clear now."

He chewed his food and nodded.

"Yes, yes. Good." He absently tapped the spoon against the side of his bowl, then took a breath. "So. You two seem neighborly." Daniel tilted his head over toward the other fire where Joshua was now standing. A few of the hunters were talking with him, but they were too far away to hear their conversation.

"Oh," she said, watching Joshua cross his arms as he listened to Waking Cloud talk. She was giving him a cheeky smile, like she was maybe trying to lightheartedly rib him about something, but his face was sober as always. "Yeah, I guess. He's okay. I don't know."

"He wants you to help him fight, doesn't he?"

"What?" Six shook her head. "No. He hasn't asked me to do anything other than run around and fetch things for him. A little support work here and there, boring stuff like that."

"He will." Daniel's eyes were still trained on Joshua. "He can't help himself."

Six puzzled over that expression for a moment. _Literally: he cannot give himself help. A figure of speech: he can't stop himself._  She wondered which one was most suitable for what he meant. Daniel turned his head back to her and raised his eyebrows.

"I know it seems like the right thing to do. But I've been down this road enough times to see it leads nowhere worthwhile."

 _Here we go again,_ she thought. She'd been on the receiving end of this sermon a few times already, and she still was no closer to understanding what Daniel was talking about. 

"But don't you think the situation here is kind of dire? The White Legs won't stop. Isn't it okay to kill them?" Daniel frowned at her, as if her question was completely incomprehensible.

"What do you mean by okay? In self-defense, of course. I'd kill as many of them as it took to keep the Sorrows safe. But Joshua doesn't mean self-defense. He means total war. There's a difference."

"I don't understand."

Daniel sighed and flipped the spoon back and forth in his hands, then set it down on the table.

"Listen. With every act of violence you commit in this world - no matter what justifications you can come up with - this world changes." His eyes softened. "But you change, too. It becomes easier to stray from the light. Sometimes it's not about what they deserve. It's about what you can live with."

She bit the side of her thumb and tried to make sense of what he was saying.

He looked back down, like he was finished talking, then suddenly leaned forward again. "No, you know what? Let me be frank. I see this whole - " he waved his hands. "This whole thing going on." His eyes darted back to Joshua. "He's got a certain...brute persuasion. I get it." She opened her mouth to retort, but he pressed on. "And especially to an outsider like you, fighting seems like the practical thing to do. But just think of how quickly that route could get out of hand and turn into something terrible. Something cruel."

She rested her cheek on her hand and sorted out her thoughts.

"Come on," she began. "There's a big leap between fighting back against an attacker and doing something just for the sake of cruelty. I get why you're worried, but you should know I wouldn't cross that line."

"No." His tone made her uneasy. "I actually don't know anything about you at all." He gave her a scrutinizing frown, and she felt self-conscious, like she was now standing at this unofficial trial instead of Joshua. "You've been helpful. You joke with us, and the tribes seem to like you well enough. But I don't know what kind of person you are, really. And I do know what kind of person he is."

A stream of scathing responses came to her, and she bit back down on them. _Calm down_ , she told herself. _He's trying to rile you up._  She still couldn't make any sense of what he was getting at, but pissing him off wouldn't do her any favors. She took a deep breath and sucked up her pride.

"Okay, Daniel. I hear you."

He picked his spoon up again.

"Thank you. That's all I ask. Just look into your heart and reflect on that."

Six raised her hands. "Look, I'm not even trying to get in the middle of this. I just want to get back to New Vegas. The sooner I can leave, the better." He stuck his spoon back into his bowl.

"You can leave when you get me that map."

She tapped her fingers on the table. One minute, Daniel was trying to save her soul with his eyes full of sympathy, and the next he was three seconds away from yelling at her to get her ass out in that canyon and work. It was predictable by now, but at first it had thrown her for a loop. _Interesting guy,_ she thought. She eased off of the bench and rose to her feet.

"The Grand Staircase. Right. That's next on the agenda."

"I need it within a week. I'm serious. We're leaving then."

"It'll be in my hands by this time tomorrow, I promise you."

"Don't over-promise. You'll get in over your head." He raised his spoon at her. "And don't roll your eyes at me. I saw that."

She caught herself before she did it again, and began to step backwards.

"Okay. Good chat. Tomorrow evening, same time?"

His expression was flinty.

"I don't care when. Just bring me the map."

She gave him a thumbs-up and turned around. Her eyes fell on Joshua as she approached the other fire. The rest of the Sorrows were still talking, but he was standing by himself, staring into the fire. An idea sparked in her mind.

"Hey," she stopped in front of him. "What was the bridge you were telling me about?"

"North Fork Bridge," he answered, seeming slightly caught off guard. 

"That's the one. It's right next to..." she paused. "That cave I'm supposed to be going to. I don't remember the name. Anyway, how do you feel about killing two birds with one stone?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Waking Cloud and I were going to be out there tomorrow getting something for Daniel. How about you help us and we solve your problem at the same time? It could be a good opportunity."

He paused, and she could see his jaw just barely moving underneath the bandages.

"Are you sure we'll have time to take care of everything?"

"No," she replied. "But what about we try this - " She held her hands up. "You get in position and scope it all out, and I go get the map from the cave. You won't have to worry about that part. Then I come out and stay up on high ground. Then you destroy the cabin while I lay down cover fire. Then we get the hell out. Sound good?"

Joshua's arms were still crossed. His gaze rested on her like he was turning over her plan in his mind.

"It might work. I'm not entirely convinced." 

She turned to Waking Cloud, who was already watching both of them. 

"No pressure if you want to sit this out," Six told her.

"I will help," the woman said, rubbing her chin. "The locations are close together. I think it is possible to do."

"But not probable," Joshua added. Six turned to him.

"So what's your final answer? Yes or no?"

His turned his head away, and lifted his eyes with a sigh.

"Yes."

She nodded.

"Okay. Let's knock it out tomorrow, bright and early."

"Then tomorrow it shall be." He looked back into the fire and the light glowed against the bandages on his face. "Bring your rifle and something warm to wear. It's getting colder every day."


	19. XIX

Joshua surveyed the gorge ahead of them and tried to fight back against the terrible sinking feeling in his stomach. He scoured every rock and precipice, trying to locate some evidence for his trepidation. There was nothing to see but the swaying of the trees in the breeze. By all accounts, the coast was clear.

"Good news," Six's voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. "All my limbs are still attached and the map is in my hands. And as of now, I am..." he heard rustling noises. "In position. Hey, Waking Cloud, how many fingers am I holding up?"

The other woman's voice came over the speaker.

"I can't even see you."

"Perfect."

Joshua lifted the receiver to his mouth and pressed the button.

"Stop blocking the channel."

"Come on. I'm bored as hell up here. I haven't seen a single hostile. Not even a gecko, Joshua. If the guards were there, we should have seen them by now."

 _I don't disagree with that statement,_ he thought. They were simply responding to it differently. They weren't seeing what they should be seeing, and it gave her confidence. In the emptiness, she saw a chance to strike. All it did was fill him with insuppressible dread.

He lowered the receiver and lifted his head to the approximate area where she was situated. It was on top of an unnervingly steep sheet of rock. There was a decent amount of foliage hiding her from sight. If it weren't for the voices whispering his ear, it would be as if he was entirely alone.

"We're not moving until we establish their location. Just stay in position for now," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the opposite side of the gorge.

"Do you see something?" The soft hiss of her earpiece brushing against her cheek echoed in his ear.

His finger hovered over the button for a moment.

"No." He kept his voice low. "It's just a feeling." She grumbled something unintelligible that was almost certainly a complaint.

"I didn't catch that. I'm sure it wasn't important. Now, keep your eyes on the gorge and stop blocking the channel." He dropped the receiver to his side and he knew wherever her position was, she was probably staring daggers at him.

A few more tense moments passed in silence. Joshua watched the birds flying overhead to stop himself from pacing. 

"They're coming out," Waking Cloud's voice broke his solitary watch. 

"Oh." Six whispered. "I see. Southeast side."

He lifted the receiver to his mouth.

"Understood."

"Wait. There's only two people." Six sounded confused.

The tension in him buzzed louder. According to the reports from the scouts, there should be more.

"I have a clear shot," she whispered. 

"Go ahead." The tempo of his heartbeat increased.

"Lining up." Rustling came over the speaker. He pictured her moving from side to side like she always did. He gripped the receiver so hard that it felt like the flimsy black plastic might snap.

"Fire when you're ready." The steady sound of her breathing in his ear stopped. A second later, he saw the muzzle flash and heard the sound of the bullet echoing through the gorge.

"Waking Cloud?" Six whispered.

"You hit him. The other one is running away. They are still alone."

The foreboding sensation in his chest rose to a crescendo.

"We need to go. Waking Cloud, get back to the meeting point. Six, come back."

"Uh, slow down," Six whispered. "Give me a second, and I can hit the other guy too, and you can move in."

He tapped his fingers on the receiver. She had no backup. Every shot she fired after the first was longer that she had to lie on her stomach with her position already exposed. And worst of all, he still had an instinct that something wasn't right.

"It's a good opportunity," she added.

"No. We'll regroup and find another way. Just get down."

"Joshua, wait. I can do it."

His resolve had already hardened.

"I said no. Follow your orders. Come back." Her sigh crackled into his ear.

"I - " he heard her gasp, followed by muted scuffling sounds. It sounded like she was moving.

"Six. Come back now," he ordered. His finger depressed the button too hard. There were more shuffling noises, and then a tiny spine-chilling whimper came over the speaker. Another gunshot rang out through the gorge, but this time he couldn't see where it came from. It all couldn't have taken longer than three seconds at the most, but it felt like an eternity.

When most people were truly in danger, the point of screaming had already passed. Silence alarmed him just as much. He was already walking up toward the hill before he consciously realized what he was doing.

"What happened?" Waking Cloud panicked.

"Go to the meeting point and take cover," he said, his voice steady and his head swimming. "I'm going to go find her."

He was so distracted that he didn't notice the White Leg jumping out from behind him and swinging his club. It connected against his arm with a loud crack and he staggered back, reeling from the pain and fury and unable to see straight.

He meant to draw his pistol, but his arm wouldn't move. With his still-functioning left hand, he crossed his body and unholstered his gun. He floundered with the safety and the man prepared for another swing. Joshua aimed at his stomach and pulled the trigger until all he heard was his own hyperventilating and the tinny snap of the action.

He fell backward against a boulder, knocking the air out of his own lungs. 

 _I have to go,_ he thought. _I have to get to her._

The fury coursing through his veins gave him enough energy to push off of the rock and start walking again. He rubbed circles into his arm until the feeling gradually returned, radiating out from his shoulder in spurts of pain. It took him at least fifteen silent, excruciating minutes of walking up the hill, and then the smell of sediment mingled with gunsmoke and vomit hit him like a wall. The coppery scent of blood wove in between it all.

It turned out that he didn't need to make it all the way to the top of the hill. The struggle was long over. Six had hobbled or crawled - he wasn't sure which - all the way down from where she must have been lying originally. There was blood all over her. She was rolled on her back, curled in an unnatural position that instantly made him move faster.

Blood and dirt covered everything he could see. One of her cheeks was distended, but there was too much blood on her face to tell what exactly was wrong. Her eyes were fixed ahead of her, staring at nothing. _No,_ he told himself, frantic as the wave of fear rolled up against him. _God's not done with you yet. Not yet._

"Get up," he snapped, and laid his hand on her. She gave a weak startle and tried to push herself away on her elbows. "It's me," he said, and her muscles stopped tensing.

She mumbled something unintelligible. One side of her mouth was swollen stiff. He scanned the rest of her body for other injuries, and his heart plummeted when he saw her scarf wrapped around her thigh with a stick in it. The fabric below the tourniquet was soaked dark with blood. At least she'd been capable of stopping the bleeding somewhat.

"You're shot?" He put his arm around her shoulders and lifted her up slightly. Her head wobbled, and he realized she was trying to shake it to say no.

"Stabbed?"

She nodded.

"Is it bad?"

She made a noise that roughly approximated a "no." He looked up and down at the wash of red coating most of her body.

"Are you sure? There's too much blood."

She leaned over and coughed until she finally spit on the ground, then turned to him.

"Not mine."

In a less urgent time, he might have found that charming, but he couldn't feel anything right now but anger and pain.

"Do you have any medical supplies?" She shook her head. He didn't either. He silently cursed both of them for not thinking about it. "We have to get to Waking Cloud."

"I can walk," she mumbled. More blood rushed out of her nose.

"I'm going to help you." He reloaded his gun despite the piercing sensation in his shoulder, then holstered the pistol and tightened his grip on her arms. Her hand blindly reached out to him, groping around his shoulder. For some reason, she was trying to push him away.

A flash of irritation coursed through him. Her breathing sounded wet and muffled, thick with blood that was probably already pooling at the back of her throat from her smashed nose. He rose slowly, bringing them both to a standing position. The pain throbbed everywhere, especially in his arm, but he couldn't stop now. He pulled her up against him and wound his arm tighter around her side.

"Put your arm around my shoulders," he ordered. She managed to follow his instructions, albeit more slowly than he wanted. His hand latched around her wrist, and it felt like every nerve in his arm was burning white-hot. She put weight on her other leg and leaned against him. From what he could see, she was right about the wound not being fatal. She seemed confused, like she had already lost a significant amount of blood, but the bleeding had slowed to a steady trickle. _If we can make it home, she'll be fine_ , he told himself.

"They were waiting," she slurred. "There were more hiding." 

"I know." He looked down and tightened his grip on her wrist. 

They slowly hobbled down the rocks. She was straining to hold her head up and lean on him as little as possible. Both of them were silent as the grave. All he could see and think about was the ground immediately in front of them. They slouched back down to the bottom of the hill. There was a White Leg waiting for them on the other side of the bridge, walking back and forth as she tried to suss out their location.

"Sit down and stay here," he said, guiding her to a flat spot on the bank of the river.

"Everything's spinning." She brought her hand to the side of her head, and clenched her other hand onto the side of the rock to steady herself. "I can't see straight."

"I know. Get your pistol out and stay here. I'll be right back."

He pulled his own gun and set off for the bridge. A gunshot went off behind him, and a burning sensation spread out from the back of his shoulder again. He whipped around and saw Six climbing to her feet, moving so erratically that she didn't even look like her usual self from far away. Another White Leg had emerged from the underbrush right next to her and looked just as startled as she did. He couldn't tell who had fired the gun, but it didn't seem like anyone had been hit.

Everything was a blur as he looked back and forth between the two surviving White Legs. The one he had been stalking heard the commotion, and she was running across the bridge toward them. He saw the man land a blow on Six's chest, and she staggered backwards, dropping her gun. _God help us,_ he thought. _I have to get to her._ He started to run back to her side, but then she recovered her balance. She hauled her weight forward on her good leg and kicked the man in the knee, and he shrieked and buckled to the side. She cried out in pain along with him.

He turned back toward the other White Leg and aimed down his sights at her head. The woman had to run straight down the bridge, so it was easy work. He breathed and pulled the trigger, and relish surged through him as she went tumbling over the side of the bridge, all flying arms and legs.

A splashing sound came from behind him, and he finally turned back around. Six and the man were flailing in the water. The spray blocked most of his vision. He ran back to the riverbank, his heart pounding against his chest.

She was straddling the man, pushing his head farther into the water. The river was only a few feet deep and he was thrashing against her, but she held him down until his mouth and nose were submerged. The choppy water surged up against her chest and splashed her face, but she stayed still. His limbs gave a last impotent twitch, and then went limp, buoyed up by the current.

"Six," he said sharply. "That's enough."

She stayed bent over the body in the water, the ends of her hair falling down the side of her face and trailing in the stream. A cloud of red bloomed next to her, swirling up against the clear water. He trudged into the river after her and hauled her off of the body. She didn't resist him. The current swept the corpse a few feet ahead of them where it caught against the rocks. He kept his hands on her arms.

"He's already dead. Can't you see?"

Her face was blank. All of her weight was still shifted onto one leg. The tourniquet on the other leg came loose in their struggle, and more blood was seeping into her soaked clothing.

"You're bleeding again. We need to go now," he said, his hand still clamped onto her shoulder.

She mumbled something and stared back down at the water. He put his hand on the unbruised side of her face and lifted her chin so that her eyes met his.

"What did you say?"

"You have a bullet." She repeated herself louder over the rush of the river, and weakly pointed to his arm. "In your shoulder. He shot you. You're bleeding."

He was confused for a moment until he looked over his shoulder and saw that she was right. The waterlogged fabric of his shirt was stained bright red. Now that he saw it, that particular point of pain twinged, differentiating itself from the rest, but before, it was all one dull mass of agony. He removed his hand from her jaw and wrapped his arm around her side again. They slogged up to the bank. She shivered as they planted their feet on dry land, then almost fell down to her knees.

"Stay off that leg," he warned, and tightened his hold on her. As they walked back down, everything around him blurred together. When she began to lose her grasp on consciousness, he supported her weight and shook her until she lifted her head again.

When he was young, he used to bargain with God. He'd promise to pray for a certain amount of time, or fast, or deny himself in another way if God would only let him have something he wanted in exchange. When he was older, he learned that wasn't how it worked, and he stopped. As his mind weaved in and out of reality, he found himself doing it again for the first time in years.

 _I'll do anything You want if we make it back alive._ His thoughts were foggy around the edges.  _If she makes it back safe._

He didn't know how long they walked, but they finally found Waking Cloud. Somehow they all made it back to camp, supporting Six between them.

They staggered back into Angel Cave. Joshua kept his hand on Six's shoulder and guided her into his bed. She winced as she laid down on her back and looked up at them.

"I fucked up," she said, her voice flat. "I had no idea they'd be waiting for us. I'm sorry."

"Sh," Waking Cloud said as she ran her knife up the leg of Six's pant leg, cutting the bloody fabric away. "It's fine. You don't need to talk."

"It's not fine. You both could have died."

"You made a mistake. Remember and learn from it. We all stumble in many ways, but a righteous man falleth seven times, and riseth again."

Six made a congested wet noise resembling a sigh.

"At this rate, I won't live long enough to get that many chances."

"Stop it," Waking Cloud scolded. "No more talking. Either of you." She shot Joshua a pointed glance and tilted her head toward the chair next to the fire. "Now, go sit down and I'll see to you when I'm finished with her." He reluctantly stepped away and fell into the seat.

After a long silence, punctuated only by the snipping of the scissors, Waking Cloud put a hand on the back of his chair. 

 "Can I look at your arm?" She sounded hesitant. He preferred to deal with his own medical problems if possible, but she usually asked anyway.

"No." He stared into the fire. "I'm going to clean it and leave it alone." 

She shook her head, but seemed too tired to protest. 

"I trust your judgment."

He leaned forward and pulled at an unraveled thread near his thumb.

"How is she?" 

"Fine. She needs to rest more than anything." Her eyes narrowed. "Don't disturb her." 

"I wasn't planning on it." 

Waking Cloud looked around the room.

"You need to rest, too. You should find a bed to sleep in." 

"I'm fine right here," he answered, and tried to pretend he didn't notice the probing edge in the glance she gave him. Finally, she let it go, and simply shook her head.

"I'll be in the camp tonight if you need me." 

"Thank you for your assistance." 

"It's no trouble. Now, rest." She disappeared back down the passage, and he was alone with nothing but the sound of the crackling fire and Six's breathing.

After he cleaned up the entry wound on the back of his arm and changed his bandages, he sat and stared into the fire. He nodded off for a few minutes at a time, but every time the fire popped, he woke up.

He passed several hours in and out of wakefulness until he heard stirring across the cavern. Six pushed herself up to a sitting position like some well-practiced Lazarus. She steadily inched to the edge of the bed. From her stiff movements, he could tell she was in plenty of pain, but she forced herself to rise anyway.

Her hands reached into a bowl next to her bedside, and she picked up a rag. The water plunked back into the bowl as she squeezed her fist around the cloth. She lifted it to her hands and began to wipe over each of her scraped and bloody knuckles. Her hands flexed, and she winced, but continued to scrub the backs of her hands until they were clean. When she dipped the rag back in the water and rang it out again, the droplets that fell with a gentle trickling sound were pink.

"I know you're not asleep." She spoke without looking up.

She lifted the rag back up and held it near the side of her mouth. He saw her body go taut with pain as soon as she made contact with the broken skin. He stood up and dragged his chair next to her bedside. He settled back down in it, his eyes still fixed on her face.

"So." She wiped her cheek and winced. "Got any helpful advice for this?"

"It never becomes easy." He watched the dark dried blood lift away from her skin. "It just becomes easier."

"Maybe I'm finally going crazy, but I almost think I know what you mean." She dipped the rag back into the water. "Did Waking Cloud get the bullet out of your arm?"

"No," he replied. "It didn't hit anything vital. I'm going to leave it in. It might come out on its own."

She rang the rag out, and the excess water ran down her knuckles in rivulets.

"And if it doesn't?"

"It'll be fine. It wouldn't be first bullet left in my body."

She lifted the rag to her face.

"Where's the other one?"

"The other two," he corrected her. "One is in my leg. One is in my side."

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and despite the haze of pain, he thought he saw that now-familiar gleam in her eyes.

"You're, uh - " she shook her head and wiped her cheek off. "I don't know if I've told you this, but you're not what I expected you'd be like. I really don't know anyone else like you at all."

He watched her run the rag underneath her eye.

"I could say the same about you."

The firelight flickered against her face, and now that the majority of the blood was scrubbed off, he saw just how drastic the injuries on her face were. The skin on her cheekbone had torn open, and the swelling hadn't gone down. The area underneath her eye was a deep purple, nearly black, and the side of her mouth was clenched stiff. He must have been staring too openly, because she gave him a smile that ended up looking more like a grimace.

"I got hit in the face with a rifle stock. Personally, I think it could have gone worse. At least I still have all of my teeth."

"It'll heal, praise be to God." He leaned forward. "How's your leg?"

"Fine," she answered.

"May I see it?"

She pulled the blanket back and exposed the upper part of her leg, and he stared at the black stitches that marred the angry slashed skin on her thigh - dangerously close to the artery. Had it been a few inches over, she'd likely have died hours ago. It was only by some grace of God that she was not in the ground right now. _She will die just like everyone else did_ , he thought, just like everyone in Zion would too. Caesar and his men had taken everything from him twice over, and it would happen again if he didn't act now. Someone had to stop it. If that was the reason God spared him, then he would see His judgement roll down like a river. In the end, they must not escape the punishment for their sin. 

"Hey," she said, attempting an obviously painful half-smile. "You're shaking."

He looked down at his hands and noticed she was right. He tried to collect all the thoughts swirling in his head, but everything blotted out into one thrumming mass of rage. He was tired of this, tired of being helpless and weak and hunted. The rage rose higher and higher until it crested, and the right words came to him.

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof." He stared into the fire, and felt the heat blazing against his face. "O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."

He lifted his eyes to her, and she wasn't trying to smile anymore. Blood and water sluiced down the tip of her nose in staccato drips. The light from the fire illuminated the sweat and water and the angles of her face shone like a saint leafed in bronze.

"Do you know what it means?"

"Yes." She struggled to move her mouth, but her wide eyes said enough. "You're not going to stop until all of the White Legs are dead."

"Precisely."

Another drip of blood trickled from her nose, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.

"Then neither will I."

"That wasn't part of our arrangement. You've done enough." He didn't realize he was gripping one of her blankets until she pressed her hand on top of his.

"I agree with what you're saying. I think it's the practical thing to do."

"Yes, but you don't need to be involved with this part." His mind started turning.  _It's time for her to leave._ The realization rebuked him like an icy gust of wind. "You're free to go. You've held up your end of the bargain, and we will hold up ours."

"I'm not just gonna walk away, okay? I want to help, and you can't make me leave."

 _Use her_ , some terrible and insatiable thing inside of him said. _Practiced hands make for short work, and Lord knows she's practiced enough killing._ It brought him remorse in a hollow way; pale and bloodless. All he could feel was the uncontrollable roaring in his mind. He looked up at her, and for just a moment, it abated enough for him to take a deep breath.

"For now, talk to Daniel. He and I have come to a stalemate about his evacuation plans. Maybe you can succeed where I have failed."

"God," she groaned. "I'd rather just be out getting shot at. But okay. I'll do it." She folded her hands in her lap and paused. "Wait. What about the Sorrows that want to stay? Have you thought about them?"

At his pause, she must have sensed an opening, because she started talking more quickly.

"Waking Cloud and Dancing Flame and the rest of the hunters. They've told me they want to stay. They're not happy with Daniel's plan. I bet it wouldn't take much convincing for them to help you."

She was right. It wouldn't.  _And Daniel will be furious._

"We'll think about that later," he said. "For now, just talk to him."

The fire crackled, and she rubbed the back of her hand again.

"So, there's no chance in hell we could negotiate with the White Legs, right? 'Cause I'd be - " 

"No." He cut her off. "They cannot be reasoned with. They're nothing but godless butchers." He looked down at his hands as the rage rose in his throat again. "They allow no one to surrender - not children, not elderly, not the sick. They must be eradicated. I don't enjoy killing like this, but when done righteously, it's just a chore like any other. And God calls us to take on that responsibility." 

"Yeah. Makes sense to me." She sighed, and they fell quiet again.

"Hey," her voice pierced through the silence. "Before I miss my opportunity and die tragically with you at my bedside, let me ask you about something." She was trying to be light-hearted, but it had the opposite effect. He felt the fear return with the hard pounding in his heart. She reached into the chest pocket of her shirt and produced a string of wooden beads. 

"I wanted to ask you the other night, but, y'know. Life gets in the way. Can you tell me anything about this?"

There was a cross at the end, and he captured it in his hands. The other end stayed looped around her finger, and he had to lean in to examine it. The string between them tightened as he lifted it higher to his eyes.

"This is a rosary," he said, and turned the cross over in his fingers. "It's a Catholic thing. We don't use them."

"Would there be any way to know where it came from?"

He ran his thumb along the aged wood. It was plain, with no distinguishing markings.  

"They're too common. There's no way to tell where this was made."

Even through the swelling, he could see the disappointment spread across her face. She gave a small sigh, and looked down at it.

"Well. Thanks for trying."

He let go of the cross, and she wound it up in her hand.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he didn't know what it was to her, but he truly meant it.

"Ah, it's nothing." She waved her hand and put the rosary on the table next to the bed. A yawn escaped her, and she held her hand over her mouth.

"You should lie down," he said.

"Yeah. I'm tired." She frowned at him. "Do you want your bed back? I can go somewhere else."

"No," he said, and dragged the chair a few feet away from the bed. "I'll be here."

"That can't be comfortable," she insisted.

He settled down in the chair, and crossed his arms.

"Goodnight, Six." 

She stayed sitting up for a moment, like she was waiting for him to change his mind. Finally, she laid back down. He listened to the sounds of her rearranging the blankets until she became still.

He closed his eyes and made sure to pray. He confessed to God that he was angry and afraid, but also underneath it all, he was grateful. After all the grace he had already received from the Lord, he had asked for and received one more blessing, and the soft cadence of breath behind him reminded him of that. He tried not to fixate on the tortured and laborious sounds she made when her head tilted to the smashed side. There would be time to redress that injustice in the coming days. _There is a time to every purpose under Heaven,_ he told himself, and the time for those abominations who would defile what was holy unto the Lord was nearly up. He would see to that. 


	20. XX

The ache in her head was the first thing Six felt, followed shortly by the pulsing in her eyelids. It was familiar now, like her own personal welcome-back. Her heavy eyes cracked open, and she braced against the bright light, but it wasn't there. The only source of light was a faint orange glow flickering on the stone above her.

_Stone. I'm in a cave._

"Hi," someone said, way too loud. "How are you feeling?"

She pulled the blanket up over her face and groaned, and the hammering of her headache deepened.

"Why won't death come get me already?"

Follows-Chalk's laugh rang out above her, and he folded the blanket back from her face. He came into view over her, and he narrowed his eyes, scanning her up and down.

"Oh no. I am sorry to tell you, but..." he took a dramatic breath and tried to keep a straight face. "You are still ugly."

The laughter ripped through her rib cage so painfully that her eyes watered, but she couldn't hold it back. Waking Cloud smacked him on the shoulder and spat a reproach in their language.

"The busted cheekbone doesn't make me look ruggedly handsome?" Six lifted her head.

"You look fine," Waking Cloud soothed, then suddenly put a stern edge in her voice. "And you should not be talking so much. You need to let yourself heal." Follows-Chalk laughed again, and Six felt the air hitting her expanding lungs, sharp and brisk and painful in a good way. _I'm alive,_ she thought. _No matter what, I'm still alive._

They brought her breakfast and an extra blanket. Six was sure Waking Cloud had better things she could be doing and Follows-Chalk was definitely cutting scout practice, or whatever it was he did, but it was nice of them to come see her.

She struggled up to a sitting position and they helped her down beside the fire. Today, she was learning about a bunch of new muscles she didn't know she had, because they were all hurting now. Being aware of every single bruise and cut on her body made her realize how much she took Med-X for granted.

"In case you are wondering, Joshua is okay." Waking Cloud crossed her legs. "I saw him this morning. Make sure he keeps his arm wrapped up in the sling." 

"It's funny that you think I can make him do anything." Six pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. "But what happened to him?"

Waking Cloud frowned. 

"Don't you remember?"

Six rubbed her eyes, and the pounding in her head subsided for a second. "Honestly, no." she replied. "Everything that happened yesterday before we got back here is kind of fuzzy."

"He was shot," Waking Cloud said slowly. Six leaned forward.

"Oh, shit. He's okay, though?"

"Yes." Waking Cloud narrowed her eyes and frowned like something was bothering her, but she didn't continue.

Follows-Chalk was talkative as usual, more than happy to regale them with one story after another. Waking Cloud punctured their conversation with interrogations about how Six was feeling, and then when she tried to reply, urged her to hush and not talk.

 _Pretty par for the course,_ she thought, feeling warmer and more content than she had any right to.

 

More of the Dead Horses came by to fuss over her, bringing more blankets and food than she could possibly need. The attention made her wish she could go for a walk and get out for a few hours, but she knew they were trying to be thoughtful. Thankfully, none of them stayed for long. Being in the back cavern seemed to make them uneasy. 

By the time Joshua came back a few hours later, her good mood had faded. All she'd done that day was cut another tick mark into the stock of her rifle, bite her nails down too far, and rearrange her rock collection twice. Sitting idle in a dark enclosed space wasn't really her idea of a good time. Being helpless and being useless had to be two of the worst feelings that she had experienced so far.

Without so much as a greeting, he walked straight to the back of the cavern and started ransacking the storage chests.

"I wish I could walk." She drew her good knee up to her chest. "It had to be the leg, didn't it?"

"Give it time." He didn't turn around, but his tone was nonchalant.

She made a frustrated noise and dropped her head on her knee, watching his back as he reached up onto one of the shelves.

"Your arm's not in the sling. Do as you say, not as you do, huh?"

"I could have sworn you're supposed to be resting your mouth as well."

She shot him a venomous glance, but he continued to search through the supplies. She sighed.

"Well, I won't tell if you don't."

The rattling noises stopped, and he looked up at her.

"I have something I need you to do," he said. She wondered what work he could possibly have for her right now when she couldn't even walk farther than a few feet at a time.

He crossed the room to where she was sitting. There was a small black radio in his hands. His right arm was stiff, but he moved like he was trying not to show it as he crouched down and handed the radio to her.

"We have one radio already, but we need this one as a backup. It picks up transmissions, but can't send them. The receiver isn't working. I'm not sure how to fix it." She lifted it up closer to the light and examined it, and she could tell out of the corner of her eye that he was inspecting her face in a similar way.

"This is no problem," she said. "I can do it."

"Good." He rose to his feet. "I'll be in the camp today if you need me."

Half an hour later she put her pliers down and tuned the channel to the frequency of the main radio in the middle of the camp. On her second night in Zion, she'd tried to use it to call for help, but she realized no one was picking it up outside of the canyon. She pressed down the button and lifted the receiver to her mouth.

"Hey, Joshua." The static fuzzed over her voice. "I think I fixed it."

A minute later, she heard footsteps echoing down the entrance of the cavern, and then he appeared in the opening of the cave.

"I think you did, too."

The pain split up along her cheek again, but she couldn't stop herself from smiling at him.

He stepped in further and held up a pistol. "This won't fire. The pin might be broken." She held her hand out, and he brought it to her.

"Got it." She snatched it out of his hand and leaned over the gun.

Every once in a while, he returned and placed a new item on the blanket next to her. Within a few hours, there was a small pile of guns and electronics. Repairing things kept her occupied for the rest of the day, but her mind kept going back to Joshua. No one would ever make the mistake of calling him a gentle person, but for some reason, when he finally returned for the night, putting away his gun and idly talking with her, it was a relief to see him - maybe the high point of her entire day, if she was being completely honest with herself. 

 

They ran into a problem on the second night. She was scrubbing the build-up off of a fission battery and realized that Joshua was staring at her yet again. She ignored it, but he held his gaze. Finally, she gave up and looked back at him.

"I need to change my bandages." His voice was flat, like he wished he was somewhere else. She shrugged her shoulders.

"Sure. Let me just go for a walk real quick."

He said nothing, but his exasperation was plain. She realized this was basically the only private area in the whole camp, and she felt guilty for intruding on him.

"I guess I can get down to the other room." She paused. "Or, if you're okay with it, how about I just turn around? I promise I won't look."

For maybe the first time since she had met him, he was visibly apprehensive. It took him a moment to decide.

"Fine." 

She moved toward the wall and watched the torchlight flicker on the side of the cave. The only thing she heard was the sound of scissors slicing through the fabric. It was like he was trying to suppress any noise, even though she knew he had to be in pain. It took him a long time. Her curiosity was undeniable, but there was no way in hell she'd turn her head.

She tried to imagine what he might appear like with the bandages off. It was difficult; she had no one else to compare him to. Maybe he essentially looked like a normal person, but with a lot of scarred skin. Maybe the disfigurement was so horrific that he was nearly unrecognizable as human. The only part of him she had seen was the skin around his eyes and his fingers. _I can see his eyebrows,_ she thought. _And he has a nose._ She couldn't tell about the ears. His mouth seemed to work okay. She wondered what it might look like: Were his lips scarred? Could they be nearly gone?

"I'm finished. You can move now." She heard the rattle of the scissors as he dropped them on the table. She leaned to the side and dragged her bag closer.

"Your turn," she announced, and raised her hands to tie up her hair.

He abruptly stopped moving.

"Excuse me?"

"I need to change into clean clothes." She unzipped her bag. "So turn around."

One time back in the Mojave, Six happened to witness an NCR deserter being sentenced to death. As Joshua slowly turned toward the wall on the other side of the cave, it struck her that his demeanor was almost exactly the same as that soldier when he went to face the firing squad.

She struggled to her feet and clenched her teeth at the pain in her thigh. Standing on one leg was possible, but it wasn't easy. Each individual stitch in her leg throbbed in unison, and she had to put one hand on the wall of the cave to steady herself. She'd probably have to change the gauze over the wound soon. _That's gonna hurt later._ She sucked in air through her teeth she bent over and snatched her clean shirt off of the top of her bag.

"Do you need help?" His voice reverberated back toward her off of the wall of the cavern. A tiny laugh escaped her as she removed her shirt. The aching stretch in her ribs was almost worse today.

"With taking my clothes off?" She said, skeptical. "Hey, that's not a terrible line. I might have to use that one sometime."

"I have no idea what you're referring to." The defensiveness in his voice told her otherwise. He must have had some idea, at least. Despite the pain, the smile stayed on her face as she tossed her shirt down next to her bag. 

His shoulders were tense, and he held his posture unnaturally still. For once, she felt sort of bad about messing with him. She spent a lot of time on the road in less than comfortable situations, and this wasn't a big deal to her, but maybe she unknowingly crossed a line. It was probably a religious thing. She decided to change the subject.

"I need an extra firing pin for that pistol." She inspected a bruise spanning the ribs underneath her breast, and jerked her hand away when she accidentally touched it. "Ow." She pulled the new shirt over her head, her voice muffled by the fabric. "I didn't realize it, but I'm out of them." He didn't say anything. She tugged the shirt down completely and tried not to swear. "Okay?"

"All right." His voice was monotonous. "I have some."

"You were right, it's an easy fix." She bent over, still balancing on one foot, and struggled to pull her ankle out of the end of her pants. "The other pistol you gave me? Forget it. It's so old, I might as well just break it down for parts." She grimaced as she stood on her injured leg. "Ow. Damn it."

She finally yanked the other leg down and disentangled herself, and mentally ran over the list of things she needed to finish repairing tomorrow. There was a nice-looking night scope she wanted to get to, but removing the broken lens would require a bigger screwdriver than the one she brought.

 _He has one,_ she recalled. She'd seen him using it before. Her gaze flew up to his back.

"Wait, I saw you fixing the other radio the first week I was here. It was in way worse shape than the one you gave me. You know how they work."

The only noise was the fire hissing between them.

"Joshua? Don't you?"

"Of course I do." A note of calm threaded through his voice. It made her think of slow water flowing over stones. 

She scrunched her face up in confusion, but he couldn't see it. Sometimes, she thought she'd studied Joshua enough to know what was going on in his head, and then he'd be back to inscrutable all over again, but she supposed she was sort of getting used to it. She struggled through changing her underwear and gingerly stepped back into her pants. Unfortunately, she didn't expect her trip here to be this long, and she only brought one pair of pajamas, but it would have to do. Her teeth clenched as she pulled her pants over the wound. Trying to avoid it was nearly impossible. Finally, she and the room around her started to spin.

"Okay," she exhaled. "I'm done. You can turn around now." The dizziness didn't go away, and she had to grab on to the table to lower herself back down to the ground. "God. That was awful."

He didn't respond, but she had a notion that he might agree with her assessment.

 

Maybe by night three, staying in the cave wasn't strictly necessary anymore. As they sat by the fire, she thought about asking him if she should go back to her own bed. He dragged in another one for himself, but she never saw him sleeping in it. It was probably a major inconvenience for him to have her in his space all the time.

He was cleaning and oiling a stack of guns, and neither one of them had spoken for a while. The uninjured corner of her mouth was clamped around the end of a sewing needle, and she spread her coat out on her lap. The plan for tonight was to add an extra pocket to the inside lining. That morning, Joshua brought a few more torches inside the cave because she mentioned it was too dark, and it was much easier to see what she was working on now.

"So." She took the needle out of her mouth. "I can walk now."

"Yes." He pulled the slide back on the pistol in his hand.

"I feel bad for just camping out in here," she pressed forward.

"It's no trouble." His tone was aloof. "We wouldn't let someone with an injury sleep outside."

"Well, what I'm saying is, I feel better. So..." The light flickered across his face. It threw an endless variation of shadows on his features underneath the bandages, but his expression never changed. "I can go back to where I used to sleep. Tonight, probably." He was silent for a moment.

"If that's what you want." She tried to read him for any clues, but his voice was as collected as his face. He wouldn't give anything up.

"I mean, I don't want to bother you or anything."

He stopped moving his hands on the gun.

"You don't bother me."

"Okay." She shrugged. "Just checking."

Instead of responding, he went back to cleaning the pistol, and she began to thread the needle between her fingers, sharing the uneasy silence.

 

So she stayed. It was less weird than it should have been, in theory. In the evenings he'd come back and they'd quietly go about their own business next to each other. He'd read or maintain the supply of guns and she would tinker with whatever mechanical things she could find laying around. Sometimes, they'd set a bucket of old ammo casings between them and work together to reload them.

They talked about the war, too. Their chances would be less dismal if they got some of the Sorrows as reinforcements, but Joshua seemed hesitant to plan anything out until she talked to Daniel.

"As soon as I can, I'm walking over to the Narrows," she assured him. She thought it would make him feel better, but it didn't seem to work.

"Don't force yourself and make it worse. You won't be any help in a fight if you can't walk," he murmured. It would have been easy to mistake his mood for melancholy, but she saw the spiteful fire burning in his eyes and knew better.

On night four, she was lying on the ground next to the fire with a fur pulled around her shoulders, drinking the coffee she had found in one of the pockets of her bag. She thought she'd run out again, but there must have been a few packets she forgot about. He was reading a book in the chair across from her. She had finally put away her tools for the day and was bored out of her mind.

"Hey, I'm not gonna finish the rest of this. Do you want it?" She held the mug up to him. He glanced up from his book, and she thought he looked sort of tired. 

"No thank you. I don't drink coffee."

His rules confused her sometimes. She already knew that he didn't drink alcohol, but that was a new one.

A few weeks ago, she picked up a bottle of vodka in one of the ranger stations and stashed it for bad nights when she couldn't go to sleep. She thought she was being sneaky, until one night when she saw him looking for something to sterilize one of the medical kits. He deftly unzipped her bag like he owned it and used the vodka to wipe down the blades. It left her dumbfounded, but he capped and replaced it without saying a word. If he disapproved, he kept it to himself. She was drinking much less than she used to, anyway.

"Do you want something to read?"

She shifted a little and tried not to look self-conscious. He had offered her a few different books already. She picked one of the smaller ones up, but the words were long and and it was a struggle to connect them all. It was usually a little bit difficult to stay focused while she was reading, but it seemed harder now. Maybe she was out of practice. It made her head hurt worse than usual, and after toiling through two pages, she gave up.

"Nope."

He sighed and shook his head, and went back to his book. It gave her an idea, but she didn't know how he'd feel about it. She ran her fingers along the fur and took a deep breath.

"Can you read out loud?"

Some kind of disturbance passed over his face, as if he had seen a ghost standing directly behind her.

"Is everything okay?" She regretted asking him already.

He shook his head and looked down at the book.

"I'm fine. Shall I start over, or continue where I was at?"

She shrugged.

"Just keep going, I guess."

It sounded like he must have started over anyway. His voice was calm and soothing and then rose with fervor at all the right parts. She rested her chin on her hands and stared into the fire again.

 _I'm so screwed._ She was starting to like this way too much for her own good. She reassured herself that it was nothing. _It's just like having a coworker-slash-roommate that I also can't stop thinking about having sex with. No big deal,_ she told herself as she watched him leisurely turn the page in his book and continue reading. _It's not a problem if I don't let it become one._

When he wasn't around, she admitted to herself that it was all kinds of complicated, but when he was right next to her, it was easy. Everything else in the short span of time she remembered had been so hard. Living was a never-ending race to stay one step ahead of the fifteen things that were trying to kill her at any given time.

 _It's only going to get harder,_ she thought, watching the smoke pour from the charred black embers at the bottom of the fire. _And that's my own decision._

A deep sorrow hollowed out a space in her chest and settled there. All of the ways she could go after this was over stood in front of her. _I could go south_ , she thought, _and look for my family. I could go west and sign back on with the Mojave Express. I could take ED-E and we could wander around until the end of my days._

It was nice to imagine, but in the pit of her stomach there was only one way that called her name: back down the I-15 to New Vegas, platinum chip in hand. Somehow, she ended up at the right place, at the right time, with the right package. Maybe she could be the right person. The temptation to find out was irresistible.

Her thoughts drifted to the rosary in her pocket, always safe next to the chip. She must have had it for a reason, but she hadn't prayed a single time since coming back to the world of the living. She didn't even know how.

_I wonder if someone is praying for me._

She wondered if her parents were alive. An abstract sense of guilt always lingered whenever she thought of them. She had a stream of apologies she'd like to say to them, arranging the words in different ways so they would know how sorry she was for not being there. They might have given up hope that she was still alive, and made peace with her death even though they had no body to bury.

Maybe her mother lit a candle every night and prayed that one day, she'd arrive on their doorstep. Maybe it was her father, and he only did it every once in a while. She wondered if they'd even recognize her as her old self, whoever she had been. Her heart wrenched for the idea of some person kneeling and staring into the flame like they could summon enough power that God himself would appear and call her back home.

 _No one's listening,_ she thought. _And I'm sorry._

The picture evaporated. It was pointless to indulge herself. She took the images she conjured up and put them behind her as one might have thrown an old scrap of paper into a fire. _I have nothing real,_ she reminded herself. _No people_. Maybe they really did exist somewhere underneath the same sky as her, but if they weren't in front of her, it might as well not be real. There was no use spending time on stupid daydreams.

Looking back was impossible. The rosary and the chip were both only small clues to two abyssal unknowns on either side of her. _Look back, or walk forward._

She had to keep going. _Someday, it'll be worth it. I can't stop yet._ The fire danced in front of her, consuming the last of the wood Joshua had gathered.

"For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever, seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? As the fool." His voice tugged her back to the present.

"This is the bible?" She pushed her hair back over her shoulder.

"Yes."

"I didn't know it was so depressing. I know some stuff from it, but the parts you say are all pretty bleak."

He glanced up at her, mildly taken aback.

"Some parts are, yes. There is a time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together. It's not meant to be discouraging. Everything has its time and place, both the good and the bad. These words contains great joy and beauty as well." 

"All I ever hear about is how we're all doomed." She scoffed, folding her hands under her chin. "I mean, don't get me wrong, that suits me just fine."

He looked down at the book and flipped forward a few pages.

"Then I have been remiss." He leaned forward and began to read. "Thou art beautiful, oh my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me. Thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead." His eyes scanned down the page for a second, then he continued. "As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks. Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" He looked up from the book like he was waiting for her reaction.

"Huh," she said, rolling the words around in her mind. She had to hand it to him - they were definitely different than the ones he usually said. "As terrible as an army with banners. In a way, that's a nice thing to say about a girl. I like that."

"I thought you would." He leaned back in his seat. She rested her cheek against her hand and tapped her finger against the side of the mug of coffee, long gone cold. 

"Do you think people actually used to say that kind of stuff to each other?"

He lifted his eyes to her.

"Yes. They still do. Societies may rise and crumble, but some things never change."

He was still watching her, and she averted her eyes. He always had a minor problem with keeping his eyes to himself, but it seemed like it was getting more noticeable lately. She knew her face was busted up, but he was completely incapable of being discreet with his gawking. Most of the time, she'd ignore him. It usually made her uncomfortable to know she was being watched, but it was him, so it didn't genuinely bother her. _He's just strange_ , she told herself. _There's no rhyme or reason to why he does things._

It was during the smallest things - tying her hair up, fixing her clothes, wiping her face off. Sometimes he'd completely stop whatever he was doing, and then when she finally returned his glance, he'd quickly go back to his work.

The words he read made her wonder if he'd ever had someone he loved, or even been married. She thought it was mostly an outdated old world custom, but Daniel told her that marrying young was common in their culture, and it seemed like they placed a lot of importance on their families.  _There's no way,_ she told herself. It was impossible to picture him caring about anyone that much. It wasn't meant to be an insult - she couldn't see herself ever settling down, either. Some people just weren't meant for that kind of life. Besides, he'd been with the Legion for most of his life, and from what she'd heard, he was one of its more single-minded and dutiful members. Between all the warfare and pillaging, he probably didn't have the time or the desire.

"Well," she began. "You win. That was a positive part." She tilted her head up, and of course, his eyes were still on her.

"It is but one among many."

"Maybe you can keep going tomorrow night?" 

"Yes," he answered, closing the book. "Of course."

She pulled the fur around her shoulders and lurched to her feet, limping toward the bed. She pulled the blankets back, and paused. The fact that she was sleeping in his bed wasn't lost on her, and she felt guilty again. She'd told him a few times that she'd be more than willing to move, but he hadn't accepted her offer yet.

"Are you sure you - "

"Yes." He cut her off. "Don't ask me again. The answer will be the same."

She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her legs up, stiff and painful.

"Okay. Geez. I get it."

"By now, I would hope so. Goodnight, Six."

They had a long road ahead of them, and as she pulled the blankets over herself, her mind drifted over all of the coming troubles that she wouldn't be able to put off for long. _I have to talk to Daniel. I have to talk to the Sorrows. I have to come up with a plan._ For now, though, it was like the world could stop and she could imagine that everything was all right. Tomorrow she would wake up in a strange land with nothing but a hundred problems to figure out, but tomorrow seemed further away than ever before.


	21. XXI

"Good evening."

Six's hair draped along the blankets and hung off of the foot of the bed. She was lying on her back, intently studying the ceiling above her. Joshua received no response except the movement of her arm as she tossed up a small rock and caught it above her face. It landed in the middle of her palm with a muffled slap. Staying inside was clearly making her antsy, but he was no longer surprised by her odd habits. 

"Have you ever been to the Fort?" She directed her question to the ceiling and threw the rock again.

"Yes. Of course." He removed his gun from his hip and set it on the table. 

"Any way in other than waltzing through the front gate?" She folded her hands across her stomach and her shirt bunched up, exposing a narrow strip of skin just above the crest of her hip bone. After a few seconds, her question registered in his mind and he frowned.

"Not that I know of."

"Oh, come on." She tilted her head to the side and met his eyes. "No evacuation tunnels? Nothing?"

The thought of Caesar bothering to build evacuation tunnels for his army almost made him laugh, in a horrible sort of way.  _She doesn't understand._

"Nothing."

She made a noise of irritation and dropped her head back onto the bed.

"Waltzing it is, then. Not really my strong suit, but hey."

The workings of her mind were confusing. Out of the blue, she would pelt him with unpredictable and detailed questions. It was starting to occur to him that it might not be responsible of him to always answer them. He began to roll his sleeves up and gave her a sideways glance.

"Whatever you're scheming is probably ill-advised."

She struggled up to a sitting position and leaned back on her hands. With the blankets twisted around her legs and her hair tousled around her face, she might have looked like some lovely vision of springtime innocence had it not been for those cold eyes.

"I have to." Her tone became serious. "I have no choice."

"You always have a choice." He put his hands in his pockets. "God gives us free will in our actions. What we cannot choose are the consequences of those actions." She sighed.

"I guess so."

"I know so." He shot her a glance out of the side of his eye. "It seems you have a great deal of unfinished business in the Mojave. What are you doing here, then?"

"Waiting." The way she said it was so matter-of-fact as to be unsettling. He expected her to elaborate, but she laid back down and said nothing more.

He closed his left hand around the smooth stone that he'd collected from the river that morning. By now, he had seen her pick enough of them up that he could spot the ones that would catch her eye. After she went to sleep, he was going to leave it in her bag with the others she'd gathered. For someone so practical, it was a rather frivolous waste of carrying space, but it seemed to bring her some kind of enjoyment.

Almost every night, she moved around violently in her sleep, talking under her breath and hyperventilating. It was mostly just sounds of fear, but sometimes, she spoke. He knew he shouldn't be listening, but it was hard not to pay attention.

One of the first nights, he was stoking the fire in front of him and she started mumbling. It was quiet, but he could make out what she was saying. It was a name - the same one she said when he woke her from her night terror in the Narrows. He strained to hear her, and she said it again, and again, and the stick he was using to stoke the fire snapped with a piercing crack.

She jolted up in bed. Her chest was rising and falling with silent, rapid gasps as her eyes darted around the room.

"It was nothing." He stared at the green underside of the bark that peeled up from the fragmented wood. "Go back to sleep."

He learned that he had to be careful not to make any noise at night or she would wake up frantic. She laid back down and her breathing eventually evened out, but he couldn't stop thinking about it. Not once had she mentioned anyone named Benny since that night in the Sorrows camp. Joshua would have remembered.  _I shouldn't be surprised._  She was good at keeping secrets, but he felt like a fool for not putting it together.

He wondered what kind of man Benny had to be that this singular and self-sufficient woman called out for him in her sleep. Maybe he was a vagabond like her and they only met each other once in a blue moon, stealing nights together in motels along the side of the highway. Perhaps it was the opposite - they were from the same town, and right now, hundreds of miles away, he was waiting for her to return home. It could be someone she worked with - the partner she had mentioned. It was nearly impossible for him to picture what kind of person she might desire. She wasn't easily matched.

Of course, Joshua remembered the only thing she said that night when he asked her:  _it's complicated._  That phrase ran through his mind over and over, and he tried to surmise what she meant by that.  _It might not be that serious,_  he reassured himself. 

But then again, it might be. Maybe she shared things with him that she didn't tell anyone else about, and had a smile that she saved only for him. In the quiet space between them every night while Joshua was thanking God that she'd found her way here, maybe she was counting down the days until she could leave and see someone else. It gave him a sick feeling in his stomach, but he couldn't stop inflicting it on himself. His mind tried to fill in the hazy details with endless conjectures. The lack of resolution frustrated him.

She was such a guarded person, but maybe she acted differently with him. Clearly, she wasn't fond of physical contact, but she might let him touch her instead of flinching away like she did with everyone else. Did he hold her hand in his and rub his thumb along the top of each of her knuckles that were always scraped? Did he press his lips to her temple and whisper his devotion into her hair? Did she look at him like nothing else in the world mattered? Were they in love?

Joshua never had use for anything like that. When he was young, he'd thought he had similar feelings, of course, but they wilted and died over the years. He might as well have buried them in the desert for good when he walked out of Arizona.  _It felt like freedom_ , he remembered.  _It feels like being powerless,_  he reminded himself. That kind of closeness meant instantly surrendering some part of himself, and he didn't know how to avoid it. 

He was beginning to realize how isolated he had become over the past few years. Most of his life had been spent in proximity to other people, and he had nearly forgotten what it was like. Six was probably less than comfortable here and eager to leave. She was so hesitant to settle in, preferring to keep all her things packed up in her bag like she might take off any day. He took care not to do anything to frighten her, because inwardly, he was more than content with their current situation. He liked coming back at the end of the day and knowing she would be there. Amid all of the tension and fear they were living in, it gave him something to look forward to.

He liked the look on her face when she was about to break into a grin in front of other people, but caught herself at the last moment and held it back, instead throwing him a sideways glance that just barely concealed her amusement. He liked when she sat on the ground with a pair of pliers in her hand, utterly concentrated on a circuit board like the entire world had stopped for a moment. It was one of the few times when her face and body revealed exactly what was going on inside her head. Her eyebrows would furrow as she leaned back to hold the pieces up to the light, and then she'd return to bending down with her hair falling against her face until she got irritated and swept it back. By now, he could tell exactly how well the repair was going by looking at how tense her shoulders were and how fast she was silently mouthing words to herself.

"It's still not working?" He'd look up from his book and ask when her lips moved particularly quickly.

She'd toss whatever was in her hands down and look up at the ceiling, exhale a deep breath, then snatch it back up and try again from a different angle.

That was something else he admired about her - when she focused, she seemed unstoppable. Sometimes, he'd have to remind her to put down what she was working on and go eat. He shouldn't have been surprised at how quickly she was back on her feet and moving around the camp. After another couple of days, she was packing her bag and heading up to the Narrows with Follows-Chalk.

"I have to give that map to Daniel." She leaned against the walking stick he had found for her. "I told him I would."

She didn't come back that night. He stayed up for longer than usual and listened for her footsteps, but she never came. When he finally laid down for the night, it was in the spare bed in case she came back in the early hours of the morning. He knew she successfully made it to the other camp because Follows-Chalk returned that night and informed him. Joshua told himself that she was probably too tired to make the trip back, but he was still on edge.

 

The sun had already gone down by the time she came back the next day. Earlier that afternoon, the scouts brought him new maps with updated information about the locations of the White Legs. He'd been sitting at the table and poring over them for a hour when he heard footsteps with a slight shuffle on every other beat echoing down the passageway. He stared at a point he'd marked on the map and traced over it for a third time.

"It's cold as hell out there. When did it become winter all of a sudden?" He heard her muffled voice and the thump of her bag landing on the ground, and he looked up at her.

"How's your leg?"

"Okay." She removed her helmet and shook out her hair. "It got me there and back. How's your arm?"

"Fine." It wasn't true. The wound was healing cleanly enough, but the bullet was still causing him pain when he moved his shoulder. He supposed it was just something else he'd have to get used to. "And the Sorrows?"

"They're okay." She placed her helmet on the smaller table, then paused. "I don't know why I said that. Honestly? Not good. Daniel and I talked, and he hasn't changed his mind. I'm working on it, though." She unlatched her armor and tossed the chestplate onto the bed. He'd expected as much, but it was still bad news.

"Thank you for trying. I'll visit the Sorrows and discuss our plans with them when I get a chance."

"Maybe it'd be better if I did it. If you just bust in there, Daniel will know what's up."

At first he didn't understand, but then he began to see what she was getting at.

"You want to keep it from him?" He felt himself frown. "That's an underhanded thing to do."

"That's the whole point." She removed her gloves, seemingly untroubled. The idea hadn't even occurred to him. He preferred to be direct in these matters.

"Look." She tossed the gloves onto the table. "If you go in there and tell him that some of the Sorrows want to stay, he's going to try to talk them out of it. Just wait it out 'til they decide for themselves, and let him think everything's fine. If they end up wanting to leave with him then fine - no harm, no foul, nobody's upset. But if they agree to fight, then we make our move and bring 'em over here at the last minute. Quick and painless as possible."

He sighed and leaned back. What she was saying made sense, but it left a bad taste in his mouth. Daniel was misguided about evacuating, but keeping him in the dark until the last minute seemed like a step too far.

"If they fight with us, then Daniel will find out anyway. Why delay the inevitable?"

"Because." She put her hand on the table. "Making our plans quietly gives us a better chance of success, and that's all that matters, right?" She shrugged, and shifted her gaze down at the floor. "That's just my opinion. But if you don't think the extra support is worth it, I guess it's not that important..."

Of course it was important. _We must do whatever it takes to drive the White Legs out,_  he told himself.  _No matter the cost._  He looked up at her with hardened resolve.

"We'll do it your way."

She nodded like it gave her no satisfaction and bit her thumbnail, then her hands dropped to her sides.

"Ah, what a fucking mess." She started to tie up her hair and turned around. He looked at the back of her neck and tapped his pen on the desk.

"You didn't tell me you weren't coming back last night," he began.

When she spun around, the expression on her face wasn't annoyed or confrontational like he had prepared for. It was genuine confusion.

"Was I supposed to?"

It caught him defenseless. The speech he had prepared in his mind evaporated. She continued, seemingly unaware of his delay.

"That's a new rule. I've stayed in the Narrows plenty of times and never had to do that before."

"It's not a rule." He looked down at the map, and his voice came out much quieter than he would have liked. The bewildered look stayed on her face, and he finally regained his composure. "The trails are more dangerous now, and with your injury, you should inform us of where you plan to be." He set the pen down. "It's best to err on the side of caution."

She froze, and then shook her head, incredulous.

"Did you really just say that? Oh my God." She lifted her hands. "Unbelievable."

He stared back down at the desk, and the way his heart beat faster made him feel more self-conscious than he had in a long time.

"Joshua Graham, advocating caution. Is the world ending again?" She gave him a teasing smile that made her eyes shine. "I guess you've finally seen the light. People really can change."

The tension droned louder until he couldn't think clearly enough to formulate a response. He hated this feeling, like he was being pinned down and pressed for an answer that he didn't have.

"Hey." Her voice was serious, and her eyebrows were drawn in concern. "Sorry, I was kidding. I didn't mean to be a dick." The feeling ebbed, and he was able to breathe normally again. "I'm going back tomorrow night, too. Just to give you a heads-up. But I'll be back the next day." His words returned to him.

"All right. Thank you for letting me know."

"Yeah," she said, still looking at him with curiosity. "I can do that. It's no problem." She removed her knife from her hip and laid it on the small wooden table next to her bed. "Now, are you done with work? I want to read."

He picked up the Bible from the table and tucked it under his arm, and dragged his chair next to the fire. This had become a habit of theirs, and he didn't mind in the slightest. He already knew the words by heart, but he enjoyed sharing something with her that was so important to him. Besides, it was ministering to a nonbeliever, and God looked favorably upon that. 

That night, he read for longer than he normally did. By the time they made it halfway through the book of Samuel, it must have been well past midnight.

"And David took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag which he had, and his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine." After that sentence, Joshua heard her yawn and realized he was tired too. It was probably time to stop for the night. When he looked up from the page, her eyes were fixed on him like she had been hanging on to each word.

"I never thought I would see you this interested in Scripture."

"I like this one. It's more of a story." She sighed and lowered her chin to the back of her hand. "It's kind of relatable."

"I suppose it could be." He tapped his fingers on the cover. "Although, I might not speak so soon. You haven't heard the rest of the story yet." He closed the book and she picked her head up.

"You can't just tease me like that and stop. Keep going, then."

Clearly, she was tired, but her smile was bright. It made him feel like sparks were rising up in his chest, and he decided he wasn't as exhausted as he'd originally thought.

 

Early next morning, she was leaning against the edge of the table and rubbing her eyes. Steam rose from the mug of coffee in her hand. The bags under her eyes were dark and she seemed even groggier than usual. They had stayed up too late, but she wanted to finish the book and he wouldn't say no to her. 

"You need to drink that. You look half-dead."

"You always know just what to say," she grumbled, but he saw her trying to suppress a smile. She yawned behind her hand and then crossed her arms across her chest. "I'm gonna finish it and then I'm hitting the road."

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

She gave him a quizzical look. He stepped next to her, so close that her body was a fraction of an inch from his, and picked up her pistol from the table behind her. His thumb found the safety, and he reached down and slid it into the holster on her hip. She didn't recoil, but instead angled her face down, watching as he carefully fastened the strap over the back of the grip. His hand stayed on the gun, and she lifted her head back up to him.

"Go with God."

Her head tilted to the side. His eyes alighted on her scar before darting back to meet her gaze. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes looked sharp and perceptive as usual. _Not truly black,_ he noticed. _Just the darkest brown possible._ Then, they narrowed like she was searching him for something, or perhaps issuing a challenge. He wondered what was running through her mind. It was so hard to tell.

"We have that phrase," she responded. "Vaya con Dios."

"Vaya con Dios," he repeated, trying to copy her pronunciation. "Word-for-word, the same."

"Yep." She lifted the mug to her mouth, moving tortuously slow. The steam rose against his face. She didn't move away or lean further back on the table. He removed his hand from the pistol and tapped his fingers on the tabletop next to her.

"Well. Vaya con Dios, then."

"Yep." She drew out the word and her lips looked soft and warm from the heat of the coffee. His eyes found the scar directly underneath her bottom lip, and then she spoke again. "Maybe I can teach you some more words in exchange for all this reading that I've been getting so charitably."

"I would enjoy that."

"I bet you would."

Anticipation built up in his chest like a wave on the edge of cresting. She still didn't back down. It wasn't physically possible for them to get any closer without touching. His hand was on the table, inches away from her hip, and he had to restrain himself from pulling her into him. More than anything, he just wanted to touch her.

Something in her eyes changed. His concentration shattered as she looked away and set the mug on the table. A superficial smile settled on her face.

"I've never met anyone who gets so worked up about verb tenses, or whatever." She collected her helmet from the table and straightened up. "I'm not great at explaining things, but I'll try to think of some stuff on my walk. I should get going."

He turned to the side and allowed her to pass, staring at her back helplessly as he tried to beat back the unhappiness souring in the pit of his stomach.

"Be careful," he warned. She adjusted the rifle strap on her shoulder without fully turning around.

"Yeah, yeah. We've been over that already. See you tomorrow."

After she left, he picked the mug up and tossed the coffee that she didn't drink into the fire. It was still more than halfway full. The fire hissed and he watched the steam rise up and tried to force down what he had just seen in himself.

He had always believed that revelations cannot be contained or confronted by words, so human and so inadequate. They could only be felt. The silence around and within him was miserable and overwhelming and refused to be ignored, a dull ache that swelled to a bayonet pang. 

 _I can't,_ he thought, and the words thrummed in his mind like they were the only ones he knew. 

He walked back and fell into his seat. The mug ended up on the table somehow. Everything outside of him felt like a thick fog. All he could do was stare into the fire and try to grapple with the dreadful fact that some things refused to die, and could not stay buried for long. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, I've decided to be a decent human being and try to have a schedule for updating. I'm thinking bi-weekly, Thursdays and Sundays. We'll see how it goes! Thank you guys for reading and commenting, I appreciate it so much.


	22. XXII

_Seven. Eight._

Six kicked a rock with her uninjured leg and stared at the bloodied corpses impaled on sharpened sticks along the trail. If she didn't focus on counting them, she was going to lose her mind. She pulled the rifle strap tighter over her shoulder and stepped over a hole in the ground. The sun had just started to break over the mountains, and the air was still crisp with the morning chill.

 _Nine,_ she counted, passing one that was missing an arm. She stared at the withered opening where the shoulder used to be, and admitted to herself that her usual distraction wasn't working this time. She took a deep breath and tried to stop her brain from turning. 

She hadn't been fully awake when Joshua came in and started talking to her this morning, but she sure as shit was awake now. It was basically how so many of her non-terrifying daydreams started, except it was real, and when it actually started happening, she was suddenly afraid. She had no idea if she'd handled it well or not. For a split second, she was sure he'd seen through her, but maybe she ducked out fast enough that she hadn't tipped her hand.

At first, she thought he was just staring at the scrape on her cheek - the swelling had gone down, but it was still banged up enough to be noticeable - but she figured out quickly enough that wasn't it. It was like touching the end of an electric wire - just something she instantly felt, and part of that feeling was the recognition that someone else was going through the same damn thing, just reflected back at her.  

 _But he's not like other people,_ her mind protested. It had to be her misreading it all and seeing what she wanted to see. He was always kind of weird and intense. His behavior today was nothing new, except for how he very obviously looked at her like she was a house he wanted to knock right off of its foundations.

 _It's nothing,_ she told herself again, and the words felt flimsy, especially with how fast her heart was beating at the memory. Their new living situation had the unfortunate side effect of making her mind even more one-track than usual, and that track generally involved her trying not to think about them climbing on whatever piece of furniture was closest and going at it like the world was going to end.

 _But what if we actually did?_ It might not be so awful of her to give in. She could separate her feelings about him as a person from her physical attraction to him. They might both be dead in a week, and in a sick way that cheered her up a little. And even if they did survive, she'd be leaving Zion soon. After that, she would never see him again.

Her stomach dropped, and she felt even more lost when she realized that idea wasn't comforting at all like she assumed it would be. It just made her sad.

She decided to mentally shove that entire line of thought into a very small box, wrap it up tight, and throw it far away from her. Uncertainty was easier to live with. Besides, the final attack on the White Legs was fast approaching and she needed to focus on everything ahead of her. No more daydreaming, no more acting like an idiot, and certainly no more doing anything that could be interpreted as flirting, not that he ever noticed, anyway. 

 _Ten._ She passed another corpse. The jaw hung sideways from the rest of the skull and the flesh twisted and stretched over the shattered bones. She wondered if putting up the dead bodies was a tribal tradition, or if Joshua told them to do it. Something in her gut that she wished she could ignore told her it was the latter. She tried to force herself away from the image that appeared in her mind, vivid and morbid and sickly captivating: the men in Nipton being nailed up on crosses by legionaries, except Vulpes wasn't there. It was Joshua standing on the steps and directing their work, maybe raging, or pleased, or simply with that ruthless efficiency of his that reared its head at times - more frequently these days, as they got closer to launching their attack. After all, he had to have committed similar slaughters hundreds of times over the span of decades.

It was one of the defining moments in her memory, and one of the first lessons she ever learned about the world she'd found herself in, but for Joshua, the carnage in Nipton might have been nothing more than a relatively uneventful evening - child's play, even.

 

 

"Welcome." Waking Cloud waved at her as she made it to the entrance of the camp.

"Hey." Six removed her helmet, and Waking Cloud immediately grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a once-over.

"You look tired. Are you sleeping well?"

"Yeah." She fidgeted with her glove. "Better than normal, actually."

In the cave, it wasn't so difficult to sleep at night. With Joshua sitting next to her, it was hard to imagine that any potential threat could make it three steps in the room with its head intact. Waking Cloud narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

"And you are feeling better?"

"Yep." She patted the top of her thigh. "It still hurts, but it's closing up. I'll take the stitches out soon, like you said."

"And Joshua?"

"He says he's fine. I think his arm is still bothering him, but he won't admit it." Six removed her gloves. Waking Cloud clicked her tongue in disapproval, and Six decided to move on from that particular topic. "Anyway. Let's go get this deal sorted out." 

"He is ready to speak with you. I will help to translate." Waking Cloud squeezed her shoulders again. "I hope it will go well."

"Me too." Six scanned around the camp as Waking Cloud led her to the campfire. She didn't see Daniel anywhere, but she was still trying to look casual and not do anything that could cause suspicion. It was amazing what she could get away with if she just acted like she wasn't doing anything wrong. _And I'm not,_ she told herself. _This isn't wrong._ Being in the shit meant doing unpleasant things sometimes in order to get out, and there was no way around it.

Six went into the negotiation fully prepared to pull out all of her stops to convince Dancing Flame, but it turned out that for once, things went more smoothly than she expected.

"He says he agrees with you, but the Sorrows need to discuss it among themselves first."

Six had to restrain herself from jumping with joy. This was a serious situation, but she was elated to finally receive a little bit of good news. Dancing Flame and Waking Cloud talked between themselves again, and then she switched back to English.

"He says come back tomorrow night, after the sun has set."

"Got it." Six clasped her hands in front of her chest. "I will. Thank you."

Dancing Flame nodded at her and walked away like they had been doing nothing more than making small talk. Six turned to Waking Cloud.

"Wow. That was quick."

"He is eager to fight the White Legs. They have threatened our tribe for long enough." Waking Cloud sighed.

"I'm sorry. I know none of you want to be in this situation."

"No. It is life, though." She gave Six a sad smile. "Don't worry. We will talk later."

"Yeah." Six bit her thumbnail and realized that she had nothing else to do for the rest of the day. "Well, I expected to be out here for longer, but I guess I could go back home early." She stopped herself. "Oh. Not - not home." She stumbled over her words, and shook her head. "I didn't mean that. I meant to say back to the camp." Waking Cloud's smile reached her eyes and she patted Six on the arm.

"I understand what you mean. We will see you tomorrow night."

"See you later." Six put her helmet on a little too quickly and left the Sorrows until the next day. Despite the pain in her leg, she made it back to the Eastern Virgin in what had to be record time. The dead bodies continued their grotesque watch over the trail, but on the way back, Six hardly noticed them.

It was still early in the afternoon when she approached the camp. There was a large crowd around the fire, and she saw that all of the Dead Horses were gathered around Joshua as he spoke to them. She slipped into the camp and kept to the back of the group. He was speaking in their language, and his eyes swept over the crowd. He was talking slowly and with enough hand gestures that she could make out a little of what he was saying. She removed the helmet and stayed near the back while she listened to the rest of the instructions he was giving them. It seemed like he was telling them some rudimentary self-defense in case they were disarmed. She looked around her, and saw that basically the entire camp was present: the scouts as well as the warriors. The scouts weren't used to seeing combat, so if they were getting this talk, that meant it was really serious.

His voice trailed off as his gaze moved past the rest of the group and fell on her. She pointed at one of her eyes, and with her gesture, he picked up his sentence again. He said something about eyes and fingers, and Six realized he was explaining how to gouge out a person's eyes. She nodded, and he continued talking. A few of the Dead Horses asked him questions that Six couldn't understand, but he answered them as if he was speaking of something straightforward and tedious.

After they finished and the group dispersed, he made his way straight to her. She tightened her grip on the helmet.

"Ah, the eye gouge. I tend to lean toward using the thumbs instead of the fingers, but either way, it's a good move." 

"Yes. It finishes a fight rather quickly. You're back early." He hesitated, searching her face. "Is everything all right?"

"Very all right." She tried to stop smiling before she even got the words out. "I'm bringing good news, for once. As good as it gets for us, I guess."

He looked over his shoulder, and stepped closer to her.

"Well?"

"Come here." She tilted her head toward the cave. "Let's get some privacy." His eyebrows drew up with confusion.

"All right. If you think so."

She was so excited that she almost grabbed his elbow and tugged him along, but she kept her hands to herself as they walked into the cave. She dropped her bag at her side and took a deep breath. The apprehension on his face was plain.

"Okay. Nothing's set in stone yet, but I think there's a good chance that some of the Sorrows are going to fight with us."

"Oh." He blinked like he was surprised. "That's good to hear."

"Right?" She set her helmet down on the table. "Now, remember, it's not for certain. I still have to go back tomorrow night and get their final answer. But I think it would be a smart move for us to go ahead and plan for them to be there."

"I understand." He crossed his arms. "And Daniel?" Six shrugged.

"I didn't see him today. As far as I know, he doesn't know anything." She ran her thumb along the side of her helmet. "This isn't a game-changer, but hell. Every bit helps."

"Right." He gave her a strange look. "Good work, Six."

"I can't really take any credit for this one whatsoever." She shrugged. "I just passed the information back and forth." She nudged her bag under the table with her foot and tossed her helmet on her bed. "I'm sure you're busy, so go back to whatever you were doing. I just wanted to let you know."

"There's nothing I have to do right now." He looked down and fixed the corner of his sleeve. She tilted her head up at him.

"Yeah, sure. You're not fooling me. You're always busy. Go finish whatever you need to do for the day. I think we should get together this evening and go over some potential plans of attack, though."

"We can do that."

"Okay. I'll be around." She took her rifle off of her shoulder and rested it on the wall of the cave next to her bed. He narrowed his eyes at her.

"Perhaps you should rest for a few hours."

"Psh. I'm just getting started. There's plenty for me to do." She took her gloves off. "Do you have some paper I can use? And a pen, maybe?" He crossed to the table and moved aside a stack of maps.

"Of course. Help yourself to whatever you need."

"Thanks." She pulled the chair out and sat down at the table. She took the map from the top of the stack and smoothed it out in front of her. He watched her for a moment until she straightened up and met his eyes. She smiled and gestured to the door, and he looked like he suddenly realized where he was, and left. Six shook her head and looked back at the map. She must have kept him up too late the previous night, because he seemed slow to react to everything, like he just wasn't mentally there.

 

Six stared over the maps and inventory lists, formulating a plan, but after a couple of hours Joshua still hadn't returned. She figured that if she had a spare moment, she might as well take care of some personal business and tie up loose ends. If she died out here, it wasn't like she had that many people who would miss her, but it would be polite to let her friends know to stop waiting for her and move on. She tightened her fingers around the pen and pressed down on the blank paper. Her movements were slow and the letters were crooked, but she bit the end of her tongue and carried on.

 

_Boone,_

_If you're reading this, then I'm finally dead. We had a good run. I made it further than I thought I would. Please take care of ED-E. I'm sure he's driving Raul nuts. If you want to keep him, that's good with me, or you could take him to the Old Mormon Fort. Maybe Arcade will learn to like him. I know he's a robot, but he's lonely, I think. He needs someone with him. Please find Veronica. I know you hate hugs, but if you could give her a big one from me, that would be nice. She's gonna sock you on the arm afterwards, because she always does that, so heads-up._

_I want to thank you for everything. Thank you for staying by my side. I'm sorry I can't tell you this in person, but you were my first friend, and that means a lot to me. Take care of yourself. I don't have any folks back home you need to tell. It's just you guys. There's one last thing: Please send word to Doc Mitchell in Goodsprings and ask him to burn my file. He'll know what it means._

_Your friend,_

_Courier Six_

 

She lifted her pen and read back over the letter. It ended up being longer than she expected, and her head was throbbing from the strain of writing it. Maybe if she died now, there would be more loose ends than she originally thought.

"You look like you're having trouble." She looked up from the page and nearly jumped when saw that Joshua was standing near the entrance of the passageway. Normally, she was so attentive that it was impossible to startle her, but she must have been focusing too hard on the letter to notice him, and apparently, he'd been watching her for a few moments already. "You can dictate and I'll write for you, if you'd like."

"That's okay. I'm finished with it." She folded the paper up and tucked it into her pocket. He wiped his bloody hands off on a rag and gave her a sideways glance, not even trying to hide his interest.

"When were you taught to write? Recently?"

She pointed to the side of her head, but he just looked confused.

"I'm sure I wasn't any kind of poet before, but two bullets to the brain changes some things."

"I see. That's unfortunate."

"Yeah." Her throat felt tight.

He tossed the rag in the bucket they'd unofficially designated for their bloody clothes, and she reminded herself she needed to wash her things out later. Maybe if she was feeling extra nice, she'd take his stuff down to the river and wash it, too, even though she normally never went out of her way to take care of anybody else's shit but her own. She wasn't going to let him get used to the help, but she supposed it would be polite to do it once. With the amount of attacks they were fending off these days, their bloodstained clothes were piling up faster than ever before.

"Truthfully, I hadn't considered that." His eyes stayed on her. "You seem so capable."

"I am capable." The words tumbled out of her mouth. He narrowed his eyes.

"Of course. I know that. I just meant that I hadn't realized that there might have been..." He seemed like he was trying to be careful with his words. "Ramifications."

"They're mostly the kind I can hide." She looked back down at the words she had scrawled across the paper. They looked wobbly and uneven, like something a seven year-old might have written. She'd seen Joshua's handwriting before on the the sheets of paper he left lying around. It was smooth and beautiful, all straight lines and narrow loops. When he wasn't there, she liked to look at the notes he'd left on the maps.

"May I ask you something?"

"Uh." She fidgeted with the pen and tried to stifle the queasy feeling in her stomach. "I guess."

"Why did it happen to you?" Her lack of response made him continue. "Was it targeted or random?"

"I was working on a delivery." She set the pen down harder than she intended to. It felt like the noise was miles away from her ears. "It was just a mugging."

"I know your case got a decent amount of attention in the Mojave. Was the attacker ever caught?"

The pounding in her ears was louder. She felt so small and so helpless. She rose to her feet and pushed the chair in. Everything felt like she was watching it from someone else's eyes. Joshua was still waiting for her answer. She shrugged.

"Don't know. Don't really care. The past is the past. I don't think about him."

By her usual standards, it was a terrible lie, and they both knew it.

"You don't want to tell me." His voice was flat and he wouldn't take his goddamn eyes off of her. She wanted to hide her face so he couldn't look at her like he was trying to pick her apart. Talking about all of this was pointless. She walked around the other side of the table and tried to take deep, slow breaths, then gave him an appeasing smile.

"That's not it. There's just nothing to tell. Now, we have stuff to do. Are you ready to talk about our strategy?"

His mouth pressed into a hard line. He was upset, but he seemed like he was going to let it lie for now. He took the seat at the table, and she stood across from him and unfolded the map, eager to move on.

"So, there's one good way to handle this." She pointed to the map. "We split up."

He scowled, and for a moment, he seemed more like his usual self.

"That's simply not going to happen."

"Listen." She lifted one of her hands. "I take the Sorrows up on the passages through the cliffs. You take point and lead the Dead Horses down the middle of the canyon at the same time. You run into any trouble, we can help pick 'em off from above. They won't even see us until it's too late. When you make it to the camp, we circle around their flank and we both move in. They'll be caught in the middle."

He leaned back and crossed his arms. It was probably the first time she'd seen him slouch his shoulders. It was such a small movement, but the incongruity of him dropping control over his posture caught her off guard. It was real and physical and altogether just really fucking distracting. She stared at his arms and her eyes trailed down to his lap.

"Go ahead. Get it out of your system, because we're not going to split up."

 _Business only,_ she reminded herself, and then her brain caught up with his words. She was so mad she could have actually stamped her foot, but she held herself back. Secretly, she was kind of grateful he had decided to act like an ass, because at least being angry gave her something else to focus on.

"Okay, what's your brilliant alternative?"

He leaned back over the map.

"We push straight down the middle. Together."

"Wow. Real clever." She put a hand on her hip. "I'm not impressed. Just think about it, okay? This could really work."

"You say that about everything, yet you have no experience to back it up. How old are you, anyway?" He narrowed his eyes.

"That," Six leaned in and pointed a finger at him, "is a personal attack, and I'm not going to respond to it. Can you explain to me exactly what's so bad about my plan?"

"Of course you dodge the question. And how many armies have you led?"

"None." She paused. "But we don't have an army. We have, like, a bunch of guys with no formal military training and wildly different skills. And that means getting creative. And that's what I'm used to."

His shoulders drew up so naturally that he didn't even seem to realize he was doing it.

"Who is in charge here?" His voice was calm, but Six heard the strain of his barely-concealed anger underneath.

"What?" Now she was leaning over the table. The hard look in his eyes reminded her that he had spent most of his life bending anyone he pleased to his will without a second thought.

"You heard me, Six. I asked you which one of us is responsible for making decisions. So remind me."

"Oh, don't even start with that pulling rank shit. You aren't gonna treat me like this. This isn't the - " She froze, but it was too late. He knew what she was going to say. For a moment, the weight of it hung between them.

"This is not the Legion." He finished her sentence with a slight nod, and she felt a strange regret. He looked down at the map in front of them. "Indeed. It is not."

"I'm..." she trailed off again before she could say she was sorry. Was she really sorry? _Yes and no,_ she told herself. _I am, and I'm not._  For the two of them, it was a low blow, but it wasn't like he hadn't earned it.

"Don't apologize." His voice was still forceful, but drained of all previous hostility.

"Okay." She rubbed her eyes. "I won't. I - " She floundered, unsure of what to do. "I guess we can take a break. I'll leave you alone." He probably needed time to cool off. She turned to go.

"Please don't." His voice was firm. She paused and turned around. He still hadn't moved. "I'd prefer you stay."

She must have looked confused as hell, but he kept staring at her with his odd sincerity, and she wasn't sure what to do. Instead of walking away, she advanced back to the table. She grabbed the edge and pushed herself up until she was sitting on the top, and folded her hands on her lap.

"I kinda wish I had found a different way to say that." She picked at her thumbnail and avoided his eyes until she couldn't anymore.

"I feel the same way, except the fault was undeniably mine and not yours." Something in his eyes softened, and he continued. "If you're ready, let's move on."

"Deal." She leaned over and pointed at the map in front of him, tracing her finger along a trail. "Look. We could take this path, and then split up here, by the bridge." She tapped the spot. He sighed and slid his hand next to hers, pointing at the same place.

"I..." he paused. It almost made her nervous to see him at a loss for words. It was like some weakness that she wasn't supposed to witness. "I'm concerned they'll be waiting in the cliffs to ambush us like they did at the bridge."

"Yeah." She rubbed along the crease in the paper, rough from where he'd folded it. "I get that. But at least we could fight them face to face instead of getting shot at from above with no defenses."

His hand fell flat against the table.

"God help us."

Six shifted her weight, and the table creaked. Joshua looked up at her, and she felt the warmth come back to her face.

"I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to leave Zion now." He was so grimly earnest that she couldn't help but give him a small smile.

"Unfortunately for you, I'm right where I want to be."

"Your judgement is even more questionable than I thought."

"Yeah, well." She put her hands on the table next to her. "Nobody's perfect." She slid off the edge and rose to her feet. "So, we'll go with my plan?"

He crossed his arms and his face became stern again.

"No."

"You'll take this night to consider it?"

"No."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow?" She looked up at him and tilted her head to the side. The bandages on his face shifted as his jaw tightened.

"Fine."

That was the best she was going to get out of him, and she decided to take it. She folded the map and placed it on the table with the other papers.

"We're going to get through this, one way or another. I won't stop until we do." She knew she wasn't very good at being comforting, but for his sake, she tried it. 

"We'll show them no mercy." The resolve was still present in his voice, but he sounded tired.

She walked over to her bed. Carefully, she took the letter out of her pocket and laid it on the side table.

"At least that's one thing you and me can always agree on."

She sat on the bed and reclined against the wall of the cavern with her head back, staring at the ceiling ahead of her. She ran over the plans in her mind until a calmness overcame her, stilling her nerves until not even the looming threat of death could bother her. It was as if she was somewhere else entirely, and none of this was real. If it weren't for the slow thunk of her heart reminding her she was in her body, her chest might as well have been empty. It had been a while since she felt that nothingness, but she welcomed it back like a friend she hadn't seen in a while.

The chair screeched against the stone as Joshua rose to his feet. She'd nearly forgotten he was there, and for a moment, the fog broke. He was still standing in the same place, and his hand stayed on the back of the chair next to him. Even from across the room, she could see his eyebrows wrinkle up like he was thinking about something.

She pushed herself up on her hands and met his eyes. That electric buzzing feeling came back to her, and she suddenly became aware of the situation they were in: she was leaning back on the bed and he was right in front of her, staring at her. If she said the right words, it would take only a few seconds worth of steps for him to close the distance between them. The painful thought came to her that this was exactly how it had been right before Benny had jumped into bed with her.

Except it wasn't the same at all, because this was real. No one on earth had ever made her feel this way before.  _I could tell him,_ she thought. _I should tell him._ He hadn't turned away yet. What could she even say? It was so hard to figure out what the right words would be.

"Yes? Do you need something?" The uncertainty in his voice brought her back from her dilemma.

She smiled at him.

"Yeah. Would you to put out that torch when you're done? I'm gonna call it an early night. I'm tired."  _I shouldn't,_ she decided. _Keep moving._

"Of course." He walked around the side of the table and picked up the torch. It threw more light onto his face, perfectly impassive underneath the bandages. He dunked the flaming stick into the bucket of water next to the fire, and the light dimmed. The smile fell off of her face and she dropped her head back onto the bed.

"Thanks."

The low light made it hard to see, but she thought he lifted his head toward her once more.

"Anything for you." She heard the sound of him unzipping his vest.

"Cualquier cosa por ti," she said into the dark. He stopped moving, and it was so silent that she could practically hear her heart pounding faster up against her chest. "I guess that's basically the same." She rested the side of her head on her arm and yawned. "But I don't think I've ever used that phrase. I can't think of many times when you would need to say it."

"I think you're right about that. Goodnight, Six."

She pulled the blanket over herself and stared into the blackness in front of her. She could hear him continue to move around. If it were anyone else, she'd still be vigilant, but it was just him, and she didn't mind the noise. It a strange way, it relaxed her. It reminded her that he was still there.

Tomorrow, she'd talk with the Sorrows, and then it would only be a matter of days before they attacked the White Legs. After that, she would be on her way. She didn't really have an excuse to hang around Zion for much longer after that. Her count couldn't be precise, but she estimated she had two to four days left before she had to leave. _Two to four more nights here,_ she thought. Even though she'd stuck around a lot longer than she'd intended, some tiny and insistent voice inside of her told her it still wasn't enough. She would never, ever pray, and she knew no one was listening out there in the emptiness, but for some reason, she found herself wishing more than anything for more nights.


	23. XXIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for sexual content

"Fuck me."

A frenzied rattle cleaved the silence. Joshua looked up from the Scripture in front of him. Six raised a pistol to the light and shook it. The way she was chewing on her bottom lip warned him she was mere seconds away from throwing the entire thing across the room.

"Is the cartridge stuck?"

"Yeah." She shook the pistol harder and pouted. "I've been at this for so long." 

"Did you check the extractor?"

"No," she muttered. "That's not it."

"Check it."

It was quiet again except for the sounds of the metal clicking. After a few moments, she stopped moving.

"Well, shit. It's broken. How'd you know?"

"A wealth of experience." His voice sounded flatter than he intended, and he tapped his pen on the table. "That can't be repaired. You'll just have to replace it."

She leaned back over the gun and busied herself with taking the extractor out. He forced himself to stop staring at the curve of her neck and look back at the words in front of him, but his mind took off wandering until the straight lines on the page all ran together.

She was acting like nothing had happened between them yesterday morning. _And nothing did happen._ It was truly all in his own head. Now, he was grateful that she didn't notice, but he hadn't been able to shake a sense of frustration that clung to him for the past day. He could continue in this halfway place until the war was over, and then she would go. The mental image of her walking away for the last time came to him over and over while he was trying to sleep, or eat, or do just about anything else. Whenever she left his side, he felt lower than he had in a long time.

Unfortunately for him, for a couple of days he only saw Six in short fragments of time, and she never had time to talk. She'd breeze past him with her armor half-on and tell him the scouts were looking for him, or ask him if he'd seen Follows-Chalk, or some other pedestrian comment. If it was more important, she'd stand on her toes and get closer to his ear, which he found himself coming to dread. Every time he approached her, she was already preoccupied. She was checking pistols two or three times, consulting their maps, and always ready with an excuse for why she was just on her way out to take care of something. _She's simply busy,_ he told himself, but the nagging gloom wouldn't go away.

It irritated him, but he decided to follow her lead and focus on the coming fight. Lord knew there was no shortage of work to be done.

Later that night, she left again for the Narrows to finalize their plans with the Sorrows. It was one somewhat bright spot in their otherwise discouraging chances. The Sorrows were used to hunting animals, but with a few modifications, those skills could be applied to fighting people. They wouldn't need to take prisoners. If they were successful, there would be no survivors to concern themselves with. The White Legs signed their own death warrants the second they came into Zion to steal from him yet again, and who was he to deny them the wages of their sins?

That night was a bad one. Once he was alone, he stayed awake for a long time digging up old memories. New Canaan was a bittersweet loss that he kept close to his heart and unfolded often to savor the details, but he wished more than anything that he could banish the innumerable memories of the Legion from his mind. It was his cross to bear, but some nights it seemed more unbearable than others.

Those years echoed in his head, often as vividly as the day they happened. His mind came back to a familiar memory, well-worn from replaying it so many times. It was not an important day. All they were doing was meeting with some petty weapons dealers that wanted to do business with the fledgling army that was not quite yet the Legion. Joshua was standing next to Edward like he always did, his mind wandering in and out from boredom. There was nothing for him to translate, but he'd gotten in the habit of sitting in on Edward's meetings anyway.

"That's all you came to say?" Edward had cocked an eyebrow at the men standing in front of him. "Then you've wasted your time, and more importantly, mine. I don't need your fancy weapons."

"You must not be as smart as we heard." The merchant scoffed. "This is a better deal than you're going to get anywhere else, and from the looks of it, you don't have much in the way of hardware out here."

Joshua had instantly sensed the swift turn in his mood. Whether he was twenty years old, or fifty, insulting Edward's intelligence was always one of the quickest ways to make his anger flare up. That had never changed. Edward leaned forward, his jaw set and his eyes flashing.

"You know where the best weapon in this entire shithole desert is? Right there. It's already mine." It had taken Joshua a few seconds to realize that Edward was pointing his thumb at him. At the time, the feeling it gave him was difficult to pick apart. He just stared at Edward's hand like nothing else was going on around them.

"Men win wars. Worms like you hide behind plasma rifles. I don't need any of your gadgets to win my battles. So you have five seconds to get the fuck out of my face, or I'll let him," he jerked his thumb at Joshua again, "formally introduce himself to you. Believe it or not, I'm a hell of a lot more pleasant than he is."

His eyes fell upon the men to see if they were convinced, and even across the room, he could feel their fear rolling off of them in waves.

Edward waved his hand, and they mumbled their apologies as they turned around and left. As soon as the flap of the tent closed, his shoulders loosened. He ran his hands over his face.

"Jesus Christ. Morons." He leaned his chin on his hand and looked up at Joshua. "I can tell when you're phoning it in, you know, even if they can't. Were you even paying attention?"

"Not really."

"At least I can always count on you and your ridiculous honesty." He slumped sideways across the chair, absently scratching at the wooden arm. "Goddamn, Joshua. Where would I be without you?"

Joshua rested his elbows on the back of the chair and leaned over it, pressing his smile back into the corner of his mouth. 

"Passed out in a back alley somewhere, most likely."

Edward reached up to give him a lazy cuff on the side of his head, but Joshua ducked out of the way. They were both trying not to laugh now. Edward reached back up and ruffled his hair with a coarse sweep of his hand. When they first met, Edward did that to remind him he was younger and inferior, to tauntingly put him in his place, and Joshua used to hate it. After the first year, he only pretended it irritated him.

"Hey, now. You may be the favorite, but watch yourself." He patted the side of his face, and then his arm fell back over his chest. They were both so young then, but even after all those years, the wide grin on his face stayed in Joshua's mind. He always had a good memory for those kinds of details. In some ways, those were the things that hurt the most, like tiny thorns that stuck into skin and stayed there despite his attempts to pluck them out.

In the grand scheme of things, that day was inconsequential, but Joshua thought of it often. It was one of the first times in his life when he'd seen himself as he must have appeared to everyone else. _They fear me with nothing more than a glance._ It sounded naive, but he'd never thought of himself as frightening or dangerous. Standing there in the tent, he saw what he could be through some outside observer's eyes. He was ashamed of it now, but at the time it had given him a pride so strong it made his heart race. It felt like purpose. That was just one weak moment in a long string of them, seared into his memory forever.

He decided that was enough for tonight. There was even more work to do tomorrow. He folded his hands and began to talk to God. He said a long prayer asking for forgiveness for himself, and for the safety of the Dead Horses, the Sorrows, the New Canaanites, for Daniel, and for Six.

When he lowered his hands, thoughts of her continued like some kind of ghost that haunted him every time she stepped out of his line of sight. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Last night, she slept even worse than normal, and it was almost disturbing to witness how severe her night terrors could be. When she was awake, she rarely seemed afraid of anything, not even when bullets flew past her head. Not once had he seen her yell, or cry, or truly lose control of herself. Her emotions were usually so steady, always settling back into an unflappable coolness. He'd never seen her more frightened than she was in bed at night, when she should have felt safe. 

Joshua considered asking her about Benny, but he was certain she'd withdraw even further. He was closer to Six than he'd been with anyone in a long time, but it was starting to sink in that he actually knew very little about her life in the Mojave, or wherever she was from before that. Their interchange of information had always been lopsided, but it was starting to become an obstruction, and her reluctance to discuss her personal life was growing more noticeable.  _Perhaps it was something I did, or the things I did long before we met. Perhaps she'll never trust me._  He could not blame her. She was sensible in that way. 

All hazy questions; no clear solutions. Unfortunately, those lines of thought led to another, more crisp one. Whatever trouble he had elucidating her romantic entanglements, he was suddenly having no trouble at all visualizing her with someone else physically. It filled him with an unjustifiable spite, but it was impossible to stop the barrage of images in his mind. Sinner that he was, his thoughts went there all too readily.

He thought about the tiny details he'd already encountered, like how she spoke to him while he stared at the firelight flickering on the wall as she undressed behind him. From the tone of her voice, it sounded like she was smiling most of the time. The simple mental image of her taking off her shirt with that sweet smile while the torchlight moved along her skin almost made him dizzy. He pushed it a step further, and thought about how her black hair looked fanned out against the white mattress when she was lying on her back.

 _Not in my bed,_ he thought, forcing the image in his mind to alter. Someone else's bed. He paused here: was she soft and demure, purring encouragements into her faceless lover's ear and surrendering as he moved on top of her, or was she ferocious, pushing up against him and digging her fingers into his back hard enough to hurt? As he alternated between the options, he suspected the second was more likely, but they both gave him satisfaction. He began to imagine her leaning back on the table - his table, to be precise. To his dismay, he couldn't suppress that detail. It gave him too much fuel for his imagination. He pictured someone pushing her down until she was bent over, and how her fingers would look gripping tight onto the edge. Assuming her hands were free, he supposed, and not pinned behind her back. It was all the same to him, really.

It was despicable of him, but he remembered the bruises on her arms, and he imagined what they'd look like up her neck and thighs, and it made him shiver. That made him feel even more vile for how quickly it made his heart beat faster against his ribs. After he had the picture settled in his mind, he contemplated the sounds she might make - soft, barely audible sighs, whispered curses, desperate pleas, and at that point, he completely lost command over his mind.

He let it run wild to every filthy place it wanted, but he refused to touch himself. If he couldn't control his thoughts, at least he could control his actions. Crossing his arms against his chest and ignoring the pressure twisting up in his stomach and the blood pumping in his groin until it became painful seemed like a fitting punishment. He dug his fingers into his arms, and the fabric of his pants became increasingly tight against his erection, but he forced himself to endure it. _Atonement,_ he told himself, detached and cold. _Control yourself._  She trusted him enough to sleep less than fifteen feet away from him, even to undress while he was in the room, and here he was, turning that into something disgusting and impure, falling into temptation yet again. Reminding himself how wrong it was did nothing to stop it. If anything, it made resisting his impulses even more difficult.

He shifted in his seat, unable to stand the pressure any longer, and he reached down and began to undo his belt. His hand was shaking so badly. Only the clinking of the metal buckle matched the harsh sounds of his breathing.

He closed his hand on the zipper of his pants, and he thought about putting his hand on her body, and then everything collapsed. It was impossible. As soon as he stepped into the picture in his mind, the fantasy was punctured. The idea of the two of them together was so preposterous and shameful that he couldn't even contemplate it in the privacy of his own imagination. Everything came crashing down around him, and he was left staring at the wall with a crushing regret that made his stomach plunge and his hand fall into his lap with a thud. The reasons for that impossibility were so numerous and overwhelming that he could start listing them at sunrise and still not be finished when the sun went down. _I'm too old for her. I've done too much wrong in my life to bring her anything but misery. She belongs somewhere else._ He didn't even consciously realize how many reasons there were until it was too late. Even if every other obstacle was removed somehow, the mere physical reality of the burns ensured that she would never want him anyway.

The burns were his penance and his second chance. Even on the days he struggled most, he tried to remember to thank God for that gift. Most of the time, he didn't indulge himself in self-pity about his physical appearance, but tonight he was weak enough that it nearly suffocated him.

 _I am a terror._ She hardly ever commented on it, as if she didn't notice, but it would be impossible not to. She'd tolerated touching his hand a few times, but the idea that she'd want anything more was beyond reason. Maybe she'd been internally bracing herself from recoiling away the whole time.

He thought back to that day with the weapons dealers thirty years ago, and he finally stopped seeing only her. He saw both of them, together, as they must look through the eyes of an outside observer. He saw how they must have looked walking in the canyon, and he instantly knew that those nights had meant something entirely different to him than they did to her. She was wonderful and beautiful and young; they didn't fit together, and they never could. He was simply wrong for her in every sense.

Shame at his own selfishness overcame him. He'd been acting with his former arrogance, and he hadn't even stopped to think that realistically, she probably wanted nothing to do with him. It pained him to admit that he'd been foolish enough to mistake her camaraderie for something more. If she knew the extent of his feelings, she'd be horrified and run as far away from him as possible. It was the truth, and he knew it.

 _I'm a coward. Soiled. Corrupt. Weak._ His emotions always ran far ahead of his thoughts, but finally, they were catching up with one another. _I know better than this. It's a dead end._

He thought about what it might be like if their lives were simpler; how it might feel to run his hand through her hair while he read to her, or to hold her hand and rub his thumb along her fingers. None of those things were ever going to happen, and he knew it, but he couldn't stop prodding around the empty hole it created in him, as if he could lose something he never had in the first place.

He'd missed his chance long ago, long before he even knew her, just like he'd missed his chance for so many other things he should have done in his life. Even on the first night he'd sat across from Edward in the wilderness and opened a book for him, he was already lost. Everything that came after only deepened the hole he had so cheerfully dug for himself and jumped into on that night. He wasn't there to take care of his parents as they aged, or see his brothers' children grow up, or marry and have children of his own. No one would be there to bury him when he died. He had wandered far from his fold and he would spend the rest of his life paying for it, alone

 _We are just friends,_ he told himself to make the thoughts go away. _We are nothing more, and we never will be._ When that failed, he tried to pray more to purify his heart and soul, and when that failed, he stared into the center of the torch next to the table and dug his hands into his skin hard enough to make his mind go blank, erased of all things both holy and wicked. The only price he could pay for his wrongdoings was his own pain.

It didn't feel so tumultuous when she was there. In the nights when she was beside him, sewing or fixing things, he was content just to be in the same room as her. It never felt unclean or wrong. His mind quieted, even if she was fast asleep. It brought him some kind of clarity. It felt like he could breathe. Even that could not last. The walls of every place he had ever dwelled always came down eventually, and no more good people should have to suffer because of him.

 _None of this is righteous. It's not fair to her,_ he begrudgingly chastised himself. A sharper realization ruptured his reflections. _It's a distraction._ That was the only reason he really needed. He pulled the blankets back on his bed and resigned himself to silence. He needed to concentrate on the work in front of him. Salt-Upon-Wounds would not go unpunished for much longer, and that knowledge enticed him with a reason to get up tomorrow morning and keep working. The sooner they dealt with the threat and exterminated every last White Leg from God's earth, the better. _The sooner she gets away from Zion,_  his mind offered, _the better._

 

The next day passed in a haze. He took care of his responsibilities, but it felt as though he wasn't really there. His head was in the clouds all day, thinking of New Canaan and the Legion and the red rocks of Zion, this adopted home that suddenly felt too small and too fragile to contain them. It was late afternoon before he was brought back down to Earth.

"Joshua."

He turned around, and Follows-Chalk was standing a few feet away from him, rubbing his neck. "Hi. The scouts have a problem. They caught a White Legs scout outside camp. He was sneaking around. They found him on accident."

He froze.

"Outside of this camp?"

Follows-Chalk nodded. Joshua's hands tightened.

"Only one?"

"Yes. The other one was killed in the fight, but this one gave up."

He started walking to the cavern to get his gun. The blood was pounding in his ears too loud to hear. He burst down the passageway and saw Six sitting at the table. When her eyes fell on him, she rose.

"I just got back. Did you hear about the - "

"Yes." He took his pistol off of the desk and began to load it from the pile of ammunition she'd been working on. He was shoving the bullets in too hard, but he had to stop his hands from shaking somehow. 

"Hey, Joshua?" Her voice was quiet. He slammed the last bullet into the magazine. "You can talk to the scout, right? You know his language?"

He struck the butt of the gun on the heel of his hand. The magazine snapped into place and pain radiated out through his palm.

"Yes."

He took one look at her face and knew where this was going. _Not even she can stop me,_ he told himself. _We have to set an example. We have to show them what happens when they attack us in our home._ Her lovely brown eyes widened, and for a second, he was ensnared. He felt his heart move a fraction of an inch. _But she doesn't understand. Talking won't save us._ He thought of everything he'd ever lost, and the people who stole those things from him, and the anger in his chest swelled up higher. He took a deep breath.

"They mean to come into our home. To terrorize us where we lay our heads down at night. I cannot allow it. Vengeance is the Lord's, and I will serve Him and be His instrument - "

"Wait." She put her hands up, and he was so surprised that he stopped talking. "You don't have to give me the speech. Let's save time. I was just gonna say that you should try to get some information out of him before you, y'know." She lowered her hands. "Finish it."

The shock that washed over him was strong enough that his hands fell still on his gun. She pressed on. "If he's out this far, he's probably not alone. There might be a new encampment closer to us. If you can..." She raised her eyebrows, emphasizing her words to make sure he understood her implication. "Forcefully persuade him to give up the location, it would help."

 _I've misread her._ She needed no convincing. The thoughts in his mind were so turbulent that all he could think about was marching down the stream and immediately killing the scout, but as he looked into the stillness of her eyes, he realized this was a better idea - more resourceful; more long-term. The fire in his chest blazed higher and clearer, as if rekindled by a fresh breath of air.

"It will be done." He holstered his gun. She nodded, not meeting his eyes.

"Good luck."

He went back down the passage, and he rubbed the back of his hand. The pain swirled up, but he wasn't paying attention. His mind raced with the ways he could wrench the information out of of the captured man, each of them more bloody and excruciating than the last. It wouldn't be difficult for him. This was the way in which he was most useful, after all. It was his purpose.


	24. XXIV

Six walked into the cave and rubbed her palm against her forehead, wanting nothing more than to immediately climb into bed and pull the blankets over her face so nobody could bother her. Tonight, she was unlucky enough that her skewering headache was accompanied by a dull twinge in her thigh. The stab wound looked like it was getting better, but this morning it reopened on one side. She slapped more gauze on it and hoped for the best. There was no time to worry.

She rounded the passageway and saw Joshua sitting at the table. By the state of his shoulders, he looked as strained as she felt. As tired as she was, they still needed to go over some stuff before she passed out. Her hand went to her hip, and she paused.

"Hey. Have you seen my..." she snapped her fingers, trying to remember the right word. "Ah, hell. You know. What's it called?" 

"It fell off of the side table yesterday. It should be next to your bed." He didn't even look up from his book. She turned around, and saw her hunting knife on the ground, halfway underneath the bed and the table.

"You're the best. Ready to go?" She set the knife back on the table, and tossed her coat and her helmet on her bed. He looked up a few seconds later.

"Yes."

She walked over to the table where he sat and pushed herself up to the tabletop. She smoothed out the map in front of him. Her hands went to her shoulder and she began to unfasten the buckle on her armor.

"Okay, right here. Look." She pointed at the map, then continued to loosen the strap. "We know now that they've moved up the river. That might be a problem."

He clasped his hands and looked down, and the severity of the gesture made her stop talking.

"Please don't sit on the table." His voice was low.

"Uh..." She leaned forward, as if she hadn't heard him correctly.

"I won't ask twice." He was suddenly sharper. She slid off of the edge.

"Okay, damn. I'm moving." She got to her feet. The pain in her thigh sliced through her confusion, and she kneaded her hand against the muscle to distract herself. His shoulders slumped in some kind of defeat.

"Just sit in a chair. Please. There are quite a few of them." He ran his thumb along the bandages on the back of his other hand with an unexpected weariness.

"Okay, okay. Look. I'm going." She held her hands up as if to yield. "Calm the entire hell down." She sat in the chair across from him and curled her good leg underneath her. He was still craning his head, so downcast that she couldn't help but crack a small smile. Even for him, it was an overreaction, but it was sort of understandable given the stress they were under.

"Anyway, as I was saying, before we make it to the Three Marys, we need to either wipe out that camp or go way around it."

"Fine." He looked back up at the map. They went over their plans for an hour or so, and Joshua was combative as usual. However, every once in a while when they were staring down at the maps or the lists, she'd flick her eyes back up to him, and his face would be so completely drawn in what looked like pain that it took her aback. She couldn't even lie to herself and say she wasn't worried.

She knew how he was feeling, with all the stress weighing on both of them. As much as she tried to suppress them, her thoughts about Benny were getting more frequent. She'd be doing something routine, like cleaning her gun or eating dinner, and then she'd see the whites of his eyes bursting and blooming red in front of her as if it was actually happening all over again. She still had dreams about him, too, but those were usually fuzzy and hard to remember after she woke up in the morning. It would all just be impressionistic, fleeting images of him saying things she couldn't quite hear, like everything was underwater.

The most distressing memories weren't even of his death; they were the ones right before. Her mind fished them out where she buried them and presented them afresh - his hand cupping her breast, the taste of smoke on his mouth, the fond way he looked at her as he rubbed her hips. Sometimes, the memories gave her a crawling in her stomach, like every place that dead man touched her was somehow tainted and marked forever. Sometimes, she even missed him.

She had started dreaming about her pistol María, too - images of the painted face of the Virgin with her gold halo and peaceful smile. In her dreams, it was never in her own hands. She was always staring up at the barrel of that beautiful gun, pointed directly at her eyes and turned slightly to her left. _It's not really a memory,_ she tried to calm herself. _It's just my brain making things up._ In the nights, she and Benny took turns acting out their roles, alternating who was the one killing the other each night. She preferred when it was her, but in the dreams, what they did to each other began to weave together in a blur of tumultuous images, until she couldn't tell which one of them had blood on their hands.

The pressure must have been getting to her. For the past few days, it felt like her hands and her feet were moving of their own accord, and her mind was elsewhere. The only thing that distracted her was working.

When they were finally finished going over their plans, she climbed into bed and spread the inventory papers and the map around her. Joshua watched her for a few minutes, as if there was some unformed question on his lips, but he looked down and went back to whatever he was doing before. They passed a good deal of time in silence. Joshua kept tapping his foot, which was driving her up the wall, but she was stone-still, moving only to turn the pages or chew on her pencil. Finally, he stood up and pushed his chair in.

"Six."

She looked up, and he was still standing by the table, holding a book at his side.

"It's been a couple of hours. Why don't you stop for the night?"

"I'm almost done." She looked back down at the page.

"It's late. Just save it for tomorrow."

"Okay," she mumbled, and her eyes fell on the list of frag mines. _Thirty-two. Not bad. If we could lay a line down and force them to retreat through a bottleneck -_

Joshua put the book down on the table, and rested his hand on the cover. His glance dropped down.

"I'm going to sleep, then." His fingers ran along the spine of the book.

"Okay." She looked down and chewed on the pencil again. He sighed.

"Goodnight, Six."

Thirty-two frag mines probably wasn't enough to fully span the width of the north canyon at the Three Marys. If they could push them to the south passage, it might work. Tomorrow, she'd have to ask the hunters what they thought.

"Hey." She lifted her head to Joshua. He had been staring at the wall in front of him, but he turned his eyes to her at the sound of her voice. "I'm walking over to the Narrows tomorrow."

"Again?"

"Yeah. The Sorrows are coming back with me."

"It's time, then." He folded his hands in front of him, grave.

"I guess it is."

She watched him for a moment, and noticed how he stared at the wall, at the fire, down at the book he'd picked back up - anywhere but at her.  _That's a first._ A shiver passed up her back from the cold in the air, and she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. The papers were still strewn around her, and she picked one back up. She stared at it until the light from the fire finally went out, and she just couldn't see anymore.

 

Six knew from the second she woke up the next morning that it was going to be a hard day, but the look of disbelief on Daniel's face after she explained what was about to happen made the reality finally sink in.

"What? No." Daniel took his hat off and raked his hand through his hair. "This is a bad idea. I tried to warn you. Please just listen to reason."

"I did." Six shifted the rifle on her back. "And I think Joshua's right. We need to end the threat, not run further away from it. Fighting is the best option. "

"The best option." He repeated her words with disgust. "Do you know where that option got him? How do you not see it? Just look at him." He tossed his pen down. "Look at what happened to him - no, what he did to himself." His eyebrows were furrowed with a desperate anger that sprung from genuine terror. "The sins of war are written all over his body as a constant reminder, and you know what? Even after that, he still never learns! You want a fight? He doesn't. He wants a slaughter. He doesn't know how to stop."

Six kept her mouth shut and let Daniel finish his tirade. It made her instantly uneasy when he started talking about Joshua, half because she wanted to stick up for him, and half because she feared some of what Daniel said could be true.  _What I think about Joshua and his motivations isn't relevant,_ she tried to assure herself. _This is my decision, and it's the right one._ Daniel shook his head, looking more exhausted than she'd ever seen him.

"Just - please, Six. Please stop. Whatever Joshua's said to convince you, it's not true. It's not righteous. Just take a step back and think about it. Don't do this."

"I think carefully about everything I do." Her voice was hard, and her irritation rose at his implication that she was some naive girl that couldn't make her own decisions. "The Dead Horses are staying, and so am I. That's been decided."

He leaned back, and shook his head with exasperation. 

"Then we have nothing left to talk about." 

"We do have one more thing, actually. Some of the Sorrows want to join us."

"No." His voice was quieter.

"It's not up to you. They have a choice." 

"Now you're actively sabotaging us," he spat, the anger rising up again. "You're diverting people away from our evacuation. I didn't think - " He lowered his eyes and scowled. "That's low. Even for Joshua."

"It was my idea, not his." She tightened her hands on her helmet. "So blame me instead. Goodbye, Daniel. Maybe we'll see each other again. Good luck."

"If God is merciful, then no one else will suffer for the mistakes the two of you make." He rubbed his face, and his hand fell to the table. "I'm sure Joshua's waiting for you. Go on."

She walked out the door and didn't look back. One day, he might forgive her, but burning bridges was never something she minded as long as they were behind her. _Keep going,_ she told herself. _Don't stop._ She tried not to think about how tired and hollow the words sounded in her head, but they were almost to the end. Soon, it would all be over, and her work would be worth it.

Waking Cloud was waiting for her at the entrance to the camp, along with the rest of the hunters that were staying to fight. She wrapped her arm around Six's shoulder.

“They are ready. I wish you nothing but success.”

Six abruptly jerked her eyes up to Waking Cloud's face.

“You’re not coming with us?”

“No. I cannot take the chance that my children will lose their mother. I will flee with them.” Her deep blue eyes looked so sad. “For them, I would do anything.”

“I understand.” Six felt something quiver in herself, and was shocked. She knew she’d have to say goodbye at some point, but the reality of it arriving so soon was staggering. “I can’t thank you enough. I hope you and your kids stay safe. I’d love to meet them someday.”

Waking Cloud smiled, and her eyes were watery.

“I believe we will see each other again. I think your road will be a long one.” She swept her hand up to the back of Six’s neck and pulled her into her chest. Six was used it by now, and didn’t flinch away. Waking Cloud’s arms were tight around her for a second longer than usual, and Six knew it carried the possibility that this hug might be their last.

Waking Cloud stepped back, her hands still on Six’s shoulders.

“Take care, my friend.”

“I will.”

She patted the side of Six’s face.

“And sleep more. You still look tired.”

Six flashed her a contrite smile.

“I’ll try.”

Dancing Flame and the rest of the hunters said their farewells, and they all filed out of the camp. The thin sliver of the moon was hidden behind the dark clouds than crossed the night sky, moving swiftly in the cold wind. The entire walk passed in silence, partially out of caution, but also from a permeating sense of the gravity of what they were all about to do.

Finally, they made their way into the camp. The torches flickered along the entrance, lighting their way. Several of the Dead Horses were waiting to receive the new arrivals. Six followed the group in and removed her helmet. Somehow, she and Joshua navigated through the hectic throng of people and found each other right away.

"Here we are." She looked over her shoulder at the crowd behind her. "Your reinforcements, as promised." Her attempt to sound lighthearted felt empty.

"Terrible, indeed." His eyes swept over the group, and landed back on her, and then his tone was formal and distant again, like it used to be before they really knew each other. "Zion may not be lost to us after all." 

She yawned, too overwhelmed and exhausted to fully comprehend everything happening around her.

"I'm going to sleep. Can you take it from here?" 

"Of course I can. Goodnight." 

She almost put her hand on his elbow to reassure herself, but she held back. All she did was turn around and start off toward the cave.

 

When she made it to the back cavern, she fell back onto the bed, completely drained. A torch was already lit. It wouldn't take that long for Joshua to help the Sorrows settle in. She stared at the ceiling and expected him to come down the passageway any minute, but everything was quiet.

Her bag lay on the bed next to her. She unzipped the side pocket and fished out a new bottle of scotch. She drank straight from the bottle and set it on the table next to her. There was so much clutter in the pockets now that she might as well go through it and get rid of what she didn't need. She turned the bag upside down and dumped everything onto the bed.

The stones all knocked together and tumbled out against the blanket. _Have I really picked this many up?_ She took another swig of the scotch. At some point before she left, she would have to get rid of them. It was dumb, but she wasn't ready yet. _They're just rocks,_ she chastised herself. The small things she got hung up on surprised her sometimes.

She lifted the stack of postcards she'd fastened together with a paper clip and flipped through them. In between, she sipped the scotch. It made it easier to allow herself to read the lines she'd scratched out what felt like forever ago. _It's only been a few months since I wrote some of these._ Time had been flowing more quickly lately. There was really no reason to hold on to the postcards, but she couldn't bring herself to toss them, either. For a while, she flipped the cards back and forth between her fingers and tried to remember how she had felt at the time she'd sat down and written them.

She always told herself that things were so hard back then, and they'd gotten easier now, but as she ran her thumb along the lines where she'd pressed the pen down, it struck her that it wasn't true. Those months were physically uncomfortable, and dirty, and penniless, and lonely, but she knew now that they weren't hard. Waking up every day and breaking herself down to the most essential functions of walking and sleeping and bargaining and killing was the easiest thing in the world to do. In some way, the immediate physical struggles quieted the mental ones.

 _Nothing,_ she realized, as she stared at the pictures on the cards. _I felt nothing when I was writing these._ Maybe that cold fixation could be called hatred, on some level, but that was all. She stared at the worn pictures of the casinos. Maybe she'd began with a hole in her that wasn't her fault, but she'd let it fester until it ate the rest of her away down to nothing but an empty body.

Watching a single golden sunrise turn the clouds pink in Zion made her feel and think a wider range of things than she had over the span of months in the Mojave. Five minutes of listening to Joshua's voice rise and lower while he spoke old words next to a crackling fire made her emotions more rich and tangible than anything she'd encountered before. For the first time, there were days when she felt like she was really living, and life felt like Follows-Chalk's laugh, and Waking Cloud's hugs, and the walks with Joshua underneath the stars and the mountains that were too beautiful to exist, but they did, and she still did, too.

For reasons she was coming to believe she would never truly understand, she was not dead. She closed her eyes and thought about what Joshua said to her that night they walked to the Narrows together. He said in life, everyone served something, and at the time she couldn't have agreed less. _I serve only myself,_ she had thought.

She was wrong. She just couldn't see it back then. _This is what I've been serving,_ she thought, staring down at the cards that she'd poured all of her own hatred and fear and loss into and sent to somebody else, as if that would ever take it away from her. It was hard to confront that she was capable of putting that much effort into making another person mentally suffer. _I enjoyed it, too,_ she thought, with shame washing over her. It was the closest thing to pleasure that she could experience back then - a pale imitation of fulfillment. She felt a lump in her throat that was impossible to swallow. The empty spaces in her mind might never go away, and the things she'd lost might never return. _But I don't think I want this to control me anymore._

She opened her eyes and stared into the bottle of scotch, and took another long drink. With an unsteady hand, she threw the postcards and the rest of her belongings back in her bag. She laid down and pulled the blankets over herself, too unmoored and heartbroken to do anything but let the alcohol take her to sleep. 


	25. XXV

She should have expected it by now, but her rest was a short one. It couldn't have been more than an hour or two before Six woke up to someone gently shaking her shoulder. Her eyes flew open, and she saw Follows-Chalk in front of her.

"Six. I'm sorry to wake you, but can you help us?" She sat up and shoved her hair out of her face.

"Yeah." She rubbed her eyes, trying to get her bearings. "What's up?"

"There's a cazador down the river. They usually don't get this close to camp. Can you go kill it?" His voice was queasy, lacking all of its usual energy.

"Sure." As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see that his face was blanched paler than normal. "Is everything okay?" He shuddered.

"I really don't like bugs."

"Don't worry, all right? I'll go take care of it." She leaned over and groped around until she found her boots and pulled them on. Her headache had receded to a dull throb. She took her rifle from against the wall and got to her feet, realizing from the way the room slid around that she was still sort of drunk. "Be right back."

As she left the cavern, she couldn't help but notice that the fire had burned out long ago, and Joshua still hadn't come back. 

 

The moon was still thin in the sky, and there was hardly any light around her. A gust of wind swept by, and she rubbed her bare arms as her skin prickled.

There was no way she was going to find this thing by sight. She closed her eyes and listened. The stream rippled to her right, and the wind shuffled through the weeds around her. A faint buzzing steadily swelled higher in front of her. _That's it._ Her eyes opened, and she followed the sound, using only her ears to guide her. 

It was the right way, because the buzzing continued to grow louder. For once, she was so focused that it took her longer than a split second to notice Joshua. He was standing next to the stream with his back turned to her. From the way his hand rested on his gun, he must have heard the cazador too.

Carefully, she circled wide around him so he wouldn't get startled when she approached. They both knew better than to say anything to each other, but he acknowledged her presence with a nod. The droning grew louder. She took her rifle off of her side and loaded it. Joshua was a great shot, but all he had was a pistol, and she figured he could use some help. Even a single cazador could mean a nasty time if it got close enough.

From the humming, they both knew it was coming before they saw it. The sound of her breathing stopped as she looked down her sights. Her finger moved on the trigger. The guns cracked, and the cazador lurched out of the air and landed on the ground with a thud. Six bit back a smile and looked down as she pulled the rifle strap over her shoulder. It was close, but she could tell that Joshua still hit it first, taking its head clean off. _I guess I've finally met my match._ It was impossible for her not to feel a little awe at him, even after everything they'd gone through already.

"What are you doing out here?" He kept his voice low and put his hands in his pockets.

"Follows-Chalk asked me to kill the cazador. I guess you already had it covered." He was wearing a coat, and it made her realize how cold she was. "What were you doing out here?"

"Going for a walk." His voice was quiet. _Without me._ They both heard the implication. She nodded and looked down at a rock near her foot, and tried to ignore how hurt her feelings were. _Don't be stupid. He can do what he wants._

Something cold and wet hit the top of her head, and she looked up. Another one hit her cheek, and she realized it was starting to rain. She held her palms out and felt the raindrops splatter onto her skin. The drops soaked into her shirt faster and faster.

"It's actually raining? I almost forgot what this feels like. It never rains in the Mojave." Her hair stuck to the side of her face, and she watched the raindrops slide off of her palms for a moment.

She turned back to him, and saw that he had returned back to the wall of the canyon, standing underneath an overhanging rock. She was confused for a moment, then saw he was out of the rain there. _Oh. The bandages._ Getting them wet must be uncomfortable for him. She hadn't even thought about that before. 

Ducking her head down against the rain, she walked to the overhang and pressed her back to the rock next to him. She ran her hand over her hair and squeezed some of the water out so it would stop dripping down her back. 

"You can stay out there if you'd prefer. I'll wait here." He tilted his head toward the valley.

"Nah. I'm good right here." The dry part underneath the rocks was so small that their shoulders bumped up against each other if she moved. She stayed still and tried to act like she didn't care, even though her entire body was telling her she cared a lot. The warm feeling in her face and the thumping in her chest just wouldn't go away.

"The rains here often pass quickly. It shouldn't be much longer."

"I'm not worried about it." She shivered. Without hesitation, he began to take his coat off. She wondered what he was doing until he held it out to her.

"Oh, no thanks. I'm fine." She crossed her arms across her chest and rubbed her arms.

"An uncharacteristically poor lie. You're not fine." He shook it again.

"But then you'll be cold."

"I don't mind." She didn't move, and his jaw tightened in frustration. "It would do you well to learn how to pick your battles."

For some reason, she gave in and took the coat. It was too big for her, and the sleeves hung over her hands. The fur lining was still warm from his body heat, and the collar smelled like him. Although she hated to admit he was right, it did feel a lot better than standing in the cold with a wet shirt.

"You shouldn't have come out here without armor." He crossed his arms over his chest.

"Yeah, I know." She yawned into the back of her hand. "I was half asleep. Wasn't thinking straight."

He said nothing, and they didn't speak for another few minutes. The silence wasn't comfortable like it usually was. Some kind of tension buzzed in the air around them. He was looking away if he was extremely riveted by a particular raindrop trickling down the rocks next to his face. 

 _It can't be that interesting._ Something was wrong. His arms were crossed more tightly than necessary. She searched his face and saw how tense his jaw was. It would have been easy to mistake for anger, but her stomach dropped when she looked at his eyes. There was something sad in them. She faced him and leaned her shoulder up against the rock.

"So, do you come here often?"

To her satisfaction, he sighed in defeat as the skin around his eyes crinkled up. It was the first smile she'd gotten out of him in a while. She knew she probably shouldn't act like this with him, but his reaction made her stop giving a single damn about what she was supposed to be doing. It was so nice to see him not be miserable, even if it was just for a few seconds.

"Awful." He was looking away now, but the smile was still in his voice.

"I can do better." She ran her fingers down a wet strand of her hair. "What's a guy like you doing in a place like this?" 

"Even worse."

"Hey, don't doubt me. I have plenty of game, okay? It works at least half the time."

"Assuredly from the ethical appeal, not the logical one."

"I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good." She smiled at him, but it seemed something gloomy had overtaken his mood again.

"The message itself is only part of persuasion." He was using his explaining voice, but it was worn more thin than normal. "A significant part is the characteristics of the messenger himself." He was back to staring at the rocks. "Herself, in this instance."

 _Maybe someday I'll know what the hell he's ever talking about._ Most of the time, he said what he meant clearly enough, but every once in a while he just completely lost her.

"Joshua." She leaned her temple against the wall. "You're making my head hurt. I have too much brain damage for this. Remember? You gotta shoot straight with me."

He hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.

"It's not important."

She sighed and stared out at the river next to them. The rain was coming down much harder now, striking the top of the water in fast and heavy drops. It looked like they'd be here for a while, so she tried to think of something else to say. Normally, they could keep talking for hours and she never had to consciously think about it, but he was being uncharacteristically guarded today. She thought about the cazador, and smiled again.

"I have something to confess," Six said.

He glanced down at her so fast it nearly surprised her, and trained his eyes on her like he was waiting for her to finish.

"I'll finally admit it. You're a better shot than me."

He blinked.

"Yes."

"Yes?" She laughed. "That's all you have to say? Come on, that was hard for me to admit. I'm being all vulnerable and shit here."

He crossed his arms again, and to her delight, she saw his eyes brighten a little.

"I'm better than you now. Give it a few years." He paused, tapping a finger on his arm. "Also, there's something that I noticed that makes you hesitate."

"What?" She tilted her head.

"You do this - " Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him move his hand as if he was going to touch her hip, but he stopped himself at the last second. It was so quick that if she had blinked, she would have missed it. "This movement with your body right before you fire." He put his hands back in his pockets, and his voice was more flat than before. "It's not much, but it does throw your aim off slightly. You waste time correcting for it."

She froze.  _What the hell is wrong with him?_ He sure never had any problems with putting his hands on her before.

"Huh. I never realized that before. Thanks for the advice." Her head was spinning with trying to figure out what to say to him next, and she rubbed her arms as a shiver ran through her body.

"We'll find a warmer coat for you when we return to camp." He was still looking to the side.

"Really? I've been freezing my ass off and you were holding out on me this whole time?"

He was silent for longer than he should have been. When he finally spoke, his voice was hesitant.

"I didn't expect you to stay this long."

"Yeah," she murmured. "Me neither."

"Besides," he said, regaining his usual conviction, "it's not that cold. It hasn't even snowed yet."

"Snow?"

"Look." He pointed to the shadowy mountains on the horizon. "It's difficult to see right now, but there's snow. Occasionally, it falls in the canyon as well." Through the darkness, she could just barely see that the mountains that soared above Zion were capped white.

"Oh, yeah, I see it now. Gross."

"No, it's beautiful."

"You like it?" She made a face. "But it's so cold."

"It's worth it."

They were quiet for another long moment. Maybe she was feeling unusually brave, because she took a deep breath and started talking before she even knew what she was really doing.

"Hey, Joshua? Is everything okay with you?"

His eyes returned to her, narrowed slightly with muted surprise.

"Of course."

 _Bullshit,_ she thought, but she tried to keep her demeanor as kind and nonthreatening as possible. At another time, it would have made her laugh to realize she was approaching the scariest person she'd ever known like he was a small and easily startled animal. It wasn't something she had a lot of practice at, but she gave it her best shot.

"You seem...I don't know. Like something's wrong." She paused. "Did I do something?"

"No. Not at all." She tracked the minuscule changes on his face - the narrowing of his pupils, a slight twitch in the muscle on the side of his face, a glance down - and she tried to read them for whatever they might tell her about what was going on in his head. 

"You know, your poker face is way worse than it should be." She gave him a smile that she hoped was warm enough. Underneath the bandages, she saw his mouth press into a straight line. 

"You deserve the truth. These days have been difficult." His thumb traced over the bandages on the back of his hand. "I think about the people I've lost every single day, but lately, their memories have been heavier on my mind. Do you remember when I told you that time makes things easier?" She nodded, and he continued. "Well, the opposite can also be true. New troubles have a way of opening old wounds." His eyes hardened, and spite flared up in them. "I find that to be most evident when I think of the people who have left such terrible destruction in their wakes, and yet still walk this earth unhindered, setting fire after fire. Lately, I've been fearing that defending ourselves won't be enough. If it comes to pursuing them, then so be it, but I will not allow them to leave this valley."

She exhaled the breath she'd been holding. The sheer level of determination in his voice was sort of uncomfortable, but behind that, what he was saying made sense. He was about to face the very people who'd destroyed his home. It was heavy. She didn't quite know what to say to that, but she tried.

"Yeah. I know what you mean. Two steps forward, one step back. It never really ends."

The expression on his face softened - as much as it could, for such a hard man - and his voice lost its cutting edge.

"Precisely." 

"Okay." It felt like a weight lifted off of her chest. "I just wanted to check on you."

"Thank you for asking. You've been a good friend to me." 

 _I feel so much better right now,_ she thought, staring up at the side of his face. _Better than I have in a long time._

"You can talk to me about these things, you know." She sighed and looked out at the rain. "To be honest, I feel like I haven't even had time to think lately. It's really nice to just stop for a few minutes and actually have a real conversation with you." She nudged a rock with her shoe. "This has been, like, the best part of my entire week. No lie." 

He fixed the cuff on his sleeve, and gave her that shrewd glance that she was used to, one that felt like coming back to something familiar. 

"That was...open. Have you been drinking?" 

She considered brushing it off, but they were standing so close that he probably already smelled the scotch, and for once, there didn't seem to be any point in trying to deceive him.

"Yeah. A little. It doesn't make what I said a lie, though." She tilted her head. "Besides, I've drank enough of the NCR's best men and women under the table to know that I can hold my liquor just fine." 

"Well, I can't encourage it, but that's your decision to make. In vino veritas, I suppose." He paused. "I don't believe it, but that's the saying." 

She clapped her hands together. 

"I actually understand that. It's so similar to Spanish. Verdad." 

"Exactly right. Spanish derives much from Latin, you know. Plenty of it is still intelligible." 

She wanted to lean her head against his shoulder and let him finish rambling about vocabulary words and dialects, but she settled for staring at the side of his face. _I'm going to miss him so much._ It was nothing but sheer chance that had brought them together. _And what unhappy chances._

They took completely different roads to get here, but in some way, they both cheated death and managed to end up here in Zion. Half the time, he seemed so different from her that it felt like they weren't even speaking the same language. In moments like these, however, there were terrifyingly, enormously painful things she never even had to say out loud - about what it was like to lose everything, even yourself, and what it was like to carry the consequences with you, no matter where you fled. With no explanation necessary, he understood that better than most people ever would, because he had to feel the same things, too.

 _Maybe I've misunderstood him._ Maybe he wasn't that different from everyone else. It was so hard to imagine him getting sad, or lonely, or scared that she assumed he didn't. _It complicates things,_ she realized. It made it harder to reconcile the images of him in her mind: the nightmare whose name people spoke only in whispers, and the person standing right in front of her.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she hadn't even realized the rain had stopped until Joshua pointed it out. 

"It's time to go."

Her reluctance made him step in front of her, and she reached out and put her hand on his elbow, so light, and the way he tensed up was impossible to miss. They both looked down at her hand on his arm. For a moment, she second-guessed herself. Normally, she would never touch him on purpose. She didn't want to cause him any more pain than he was already in, but she'd gotten a little carried away and forgotten.

"Uh. Sorry. Does this hurt?"

He was still staring at her hand. "Not really."

 _Bullshit,_ she thought, feeling the muscles of his arm shift underneath her hand. She didn't call him out on it. Instead, she decided to try a different approach.

"Is this okay?" She lifted her eyes back to his face.

"Yes." It was a simple question, but for some reason, he sounded confused, and she realized he was probably wondering why the hell she was touching him in the first place. It was out of the ordinary for them, and she scrambled to find some joking explanation to excuse her sudden lapse in composure.

"The way back is kind of uneven. You wouldn't want me to trip and fall, right?" She was so happy that she couldn't help but tease him a little. 

"Yet another bad lie. You never stumble." His voice was low and grave, completely serious. He turned to look down at her with that intensity only he could hold. For a second, the night air around her buzzed, and she felt herself drawing up to him like a magnet. His face was so close to hers that she had to pull back and stop herself.

"Yeah, well. There's a first time for everything." She pulled her rifle strap higher on her shoulder and shifted her weight from foot to foot. "There really isn't much space under here, is there?" It was stupidly obvious, of course, but she had to say something to cover up how nervous and flushed she suddenly was. _I'm really gonna fuck this up and try to put my mouth on his._  She wasn't sure how that would actually work with the bandages on his face, or how he would react, but she sure wanted to try it. It was hard to predict what he'd do. Maybe he would freak out and push her away. But maybe, temptingly, he wouldn't. Some undeniable part of her was screaming in her head in hopes that he'd get close to her again. It might be a mistake, but if he let her, it would be such an enjoyable one to make.

He looked away, over at the hazy line where the mountains met the black night sky.

"Right. Let's go back, then." 

They started walking back to camp. She couldn't be truly disappointed, because Joshua allowed her to hold on to his arm the entire way, and at least that was something. She attempted to stay calm, but she was so aware of each of her fingers pressing against the fabric of his sleeve, and then, the bandages, and finally underneath, his skin. 

She tried to snap out of it and be more realistic about the situation. If this was all she was lucky enough to get, it would have to do. They made their way back to the camp, and she shivered against his coat, thinking that for once she actually felt fortunate to have encountered a cazador. They were such a pain in the ass, but without that coincidence, she and Joshua wouldn't have bumped into each other tonight. For one brief moment while they walked side by side, things just felt like they were happening right, like everything in the world was fitting in the exact place it belonged. 


	26. XXVI

"When Caesar took you to the Grand Canyon, did you know that you were going to die?"

Six asked the question without looking away from the white shirt she was shoving into her bag. It was obvious that she was trying to conceal her nerves by occupying herself. They were finally moving on the White Legs tomorrow morning. It was already getting late, and Six hadn't sat down or stopped moving in a while.

All of her clothes were spread out on the bed next to her. It was mostly the same plain, utilitarian items: white and black shirts in varying states of wear, brown military-style pants, thick socks in mismatched colors - the unmarked apparel of a soldier under no banner. Joshua wondered when the last time she'd gone more than two days without wearing combat armor had been. He surveyed the clothes scattered over the bed and realized that he'd never seen her wear anything that compromised her ability to jump into a fight in less than fifteen seconds.

Those thoughts sank down into the pit of his stomach when he became conscious of the fact that the clothes were laid out because she was packing her bag to leave. He rose to his feet and took the haphazardly bunched shirt back out of her bag and smoothed it flat against the bed next to them. The corner of Six's mouth turned up. He gave her a glance as he began to fold the sleeves of the shirt inward.

"Yes? Is something wrong?"

"Uh. Nothing." She quickly regained control of her face. "Nothing. This is just kind of weird, in the big picture." She rubbed one of her eyes and watched as he rolled the shirt up. "I get into some interesting situations."

"There's nothing interesting about laundry."

"It's not that. It's - " she shrugged. "Well, you. I didn't know you knew how."

He didn't understand what she was getting at. Growing up, he'd spent more than enough time helping his mother with household chores. He could still do most of them with his eyes closed.

"This is something that everyone should know how to do. And roll your shirts like this instead of folding them. They won't wrinkle that way."

"Aw, who gives a shit? Most of the people I meet end up dead anyway. They're not gonna care if my shirt is wrinkled or not."

"And." He held the rolled shirt out to her. "It saves space when you pack." She narrowed her eyes and finally took it from him.

"Okay, fine. I'll concede to your weird domesticness -"

"Domesticity."

"Whatever. You win this one. But…" For just a second, she skimmed the back of her fingers on the side of his arm, presumably to emphasize her words. It didn't work as she must have intended it. Although it was muted through the bandages, the pressure on those few inches of his skin eclipsed everything else, as if the entirety of the world could condense into the space where her fingers had been.

"Back to my original question."

Six had already turned away to shove the shirt into her bag, and he sifted through his mind to remember what she'd asked him and put everything back together. It was something about Caesar. It was about dying.

"Did I think I was going to die?"

"No." Six shook her head, and more of her hair fell out around her face. "Did you know? I mean, in that moment, were you one hundred percent certain it was the end, even though it wasn't really?" She began to spread out the next shirt like he'd shown her.

 _Think versus know._ There was a semantic difference she was trying to convey.

"I suppose so."

"And what was dying like?"

He flattened the corner of the shirt Six was working on.

"It was like going back home to God. Does that make sense?"

"You want me to be honest?"

"Of course."

"Nope."

He thought about what Scripture he could use to clarify it to her, but this time, he decided to use his own memories and his own words. Most of what he could remember was just light. The light around him had been blinding, of course, but it was something far beyond that.

"It was like my spirit was being reunited with a presence that is infinitely larger than myself and what I can merely see around me." He looked down at the shadows stretching from the creases in the white shirt. "It was the return of something I had not felt in a long time."

Joshua wasn't sure which one of them had moved, but their sides were closer to one another. Her eyebrows furrowed like she was turning some problem around in her mind. It made the jagged scar on the side of her face wrinkle up and stand out more clearly against her temple.

"Huh."

He thought she was going to continue, but she just looked back down at the bed and continued rolling up her shirt. His eyes stayed on the mangled skin.

"And what was it like for you?"

She shrugged.

"Like darkness. Nothing, really."

"That's all?"

"Yep." Six bent over her open bag and rearranged the clothes. "Am I missing anything?" He stared at the outline of her shoulders through her shirt. From what he understood, she was unconscious for a long time after being shot. He wanted to ask her more, but she was acting like the matter was closed. 

"As much as you toss your belongings around, I'm sure you'll forget something."

"I usually do. You'll probably find one of my socks in here like a year from now." She grabbed a handful of her undergarments off of her bed and stuffed them into the top of the bag. Six wasn't modest by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed like she moved a little quicker than normal. He decided not to read too much into that. "I bet you'll be glad once I finally go and stop leaving my stuff everywhere, right?"

He'd nearly tripped over her shoes more often than he cared to count, but he still chose not to answer her question.

"Where are you going after this?"

She started chewing her thumbnail.

"Back to New Vegas."

"And what will you do?"

"That's what I've been thinking about." She sighed. "I have some problems to take care of. Also, I've been trying to figure out what to do with the Legion." Joshua felt his shoulders stiffen, and she continued. "I can put them off for a little while longer, but I need a plan soon."

He ran his thumb along the edge of the table next to her bed. A dull pain burned in the exposed skin. Her levelheaded way of talking about things made it almost easy to miss how unusual it was. Six spoke as if, for some reason, it was all her responsibility - she'd take care of Caesar, or deal with the Vegas gangs, or talk to Mr. House. In some way that wasn't quite clear to him, she was important. Sometimes, he forgot that she had a whole other life outside of this valley.

Six's eyes rested on him, and he got the strange sense that she was trying to look through him.

"Do you ever think about going after Caesar?"

"Why would I?"

"Because of what he did to you." She tilted her head up at him. "Aren't you angry at him?"

"It's..." he trailed off, searching for the right way to express it. Speaking about this made an hammering feeling hollow out his heart and reverberate through his chest. It was something he would prefer not to talk about, not even with her. In some ways, especially not with her.

"Complicated?" She raised her eyebrows.

"No." His voice sounded hard in his own ears.

"Do you hate him?"

He examined the button on his sleeve and his hands flexed. He took time to notice the pain around the joints, where the skin stretched and moved the most. How could he tell her about the people they used to be, who had ended up burning a swath of destruction so wide that it consumed them, too? How was he supposed to explain what it was like to stand and sleep at someone's side for thirty wasted years that ultimately crumbled into nothing more than dust and ashes? 

There were so many possibilities and motives he'd combed over in his mind as to why Caesar finally decided to end it. Perhaps Caesar was growing more paranoid about his control, and he felt threatened by Joshua - the only other member of the Legion who'd seen the old world books its ideas came out of. Maybe the other high-ranking legionaries had been whispering in Caesar's ear, calling for Joshua's removal, and his failure was merely an opportunity to appease them, or he was the best possible scapegoat - bearing all fallibility on his body so that Caesar never had to accept an ounce.

He always wondered if Edward knew it had to end in fire all along. Maybe Joshua was the only one who was surprised. Maybe their fates were sealed a decade or two earlier, once the two of them started drifting apart, speaking more about troop movements and battle tactics than the genuine thoughts they used to share, and the whole time Joshua was just too stubborn to see it, too prideful to stop digging -

_I can't think about that._

"Love the sinner, hate the sin."

All Six did was cock her head and shoot him a glance like he'd just told her the sun would stand still in the sky instead of setting behind the horizon tonight. It tried his patience, but he asked God to grant him more.

"You may find it hard to believe, but I have no interest in taking revenge against him."

"Why not?" She slung the bag onto the table.

"It's not feasible. He's nearly two hundred miles away with the largest army in the Mojave. To be candid, all I can do is hide and kill his assassins as they come. He has the upper hand." He paused. "He always will."

"I get that, but it's not what I meant." She flipped the zipper on her bag back and forth without looking at him. "I asked if you ever think about it. Like, if all of the realistic problems were out of the way, wouldn't you want to get even with Caesar?"

"No." He laid a hand on the back of the chair next to them. "Vengeance is the Lord's, not our own. My place is not to condemn. It's to act as an instrument of God's will." The White Legs would meet their end soon enough, and they would meet it righteously. His own feelings had nothing to do with it. The Lord was using him as He saw fit.

"Look, you've read me enough of your book that I get where you're coming from. There's a bunch of stuff that you're not supposed to do. But don't you still kind of want to do it anyway?" 

The pulse in his neck started jumping faster against his skin and the tightness in his chest became more uncomfortable. Her voice sounded casual, as if it wasn't really important to her. She lifted her eyes back to him, prodding him for a response. 

"No."

"Yeah, okay." A small smile made its way across her face. She sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back on her hands with a languid confidence. "God's calling the shots and you have nothing to do with it? I don't buy it, Joshua. You're hell-bent on stopping the White Legs yourself, but it's not personal at all? You don't care what happens to Caesar and it's up to people like me to clean up that mess you've left behind? Really?"

Heat flared up in his chest.  _She can't see the truth,_ he told himself. _She hasn't experienced it._ He tightened his fingers on the back of the chair. He used to be terrible at arguing, and would just cross his arms, tongue-tied and stewing in fury, but years of having Edward talk circles around him had taught him a few things.

"I am doing the best I can to carry my past burdens and walk in the way the Lord has commanded me. What I don't understand is why you have you taken up these burdens on yourself." He leaned forward. "You don't live in Legion territory and you've never even met Edward, but you talk constantly about killing him anyway. You were able to leave Zion weeks ago, but you're still here to fight the White Legs. If you find my motivations so unrighteous, then why are you still here?"

"What?" Her eyebrows knit and her voice rose in disbelief.

"No one is forcing you to fight these battles. Why don't you go back to your home?"

Her shoulders slumped forward and she flung her hand toward her bag.

"Look, I'm packing my shit right now. I'll be out of here in two days. Don't worry about that."

Joshua sighed, and he remembered how she'd acted with him when they'd first met. She was prickly about everything, always ready to lash out and fight him. Things had changed so much that he'd nearly forgotten.

"You know that's not what I intended. Don't be so defensive. I'm trying to understand why you've chosen this path to walk. The Mojave isn't your home, and neither is Zion. Most people don't obsess over problems that aren't their own."

Her lips parted and stayed there for a moment. Then, she blinked and shook her head.

"I'm not obsessing." The way the last word cut out of her mouth like a razor told him he'd accidentally hit some kind of nerve. "I can't believe you would say that to me. I'm trying to help you." He took another step toward her.

"Why?"

"You don't get it." She was trying to bottle it up, but he saw the indignation escaping into her expression.

"Then explain it to me. I'm listening." He kept his voice as calm as he could. 

She looked away and folded her hands in her lap.

"Precisely. You won't even try." Suddenly, the rumors he'd heard about her came swirling back into his head, disorienting. They'd been entirely supplanted by the person he'd begun to know. "I know nothing about you or why you're here. You expect me to account for every work I've ever done, and my answers are never enough for you. And yet you return no such honesty to me."

She scoffed in a detached way that made his blood boil, as if she didn't care anymore. She could have yelled, or cursed, or even tried to hit him, and that would not have made him half as incensed.

"Don't change the subject, Joshua. We're talking about you, not me." She jumped to her feet and circled around him. "And I told you from day one that I'm not stupid. Like you've actually told me the straight truth about anything the entire time I've been here. Come on. Lie to yourself all you want, but don't lie to me."

"I'm a liar? Compared to you, Courier Six?" He shot back, enunciating every syllable, and it sounded surprisingly hateful on his own tongue. "Your hypocrisy is astounding. You won't even tell me your name."

Somehow, they drifted together again, as if blown by currents beyond their control. Six squared up her shoulders with an obvious attempt at bravado. She might have been playing at intimidation, but he was not. _She will back down. I'll make her_. He'd done this enough times to know that was always how it ended, by choice or by force. No one ever stood against him for long. The few inches of space between them blistered. His eyes roved over her, watching for her to make her next move. For just a second, her stoicism cracked and he saw her eyes widen, and he thought she was going to finally yield. 

"I'm not fucking scared of you anymore. You're gonna have to do better than that."

She was laying a challenge in front of him, daring him to escalate, and the base part of his brain told him to do it and prove to her that he was every bit as horrible as she thought he was.

His gaze traveled from the snarl at the corner of her mouth, down to her clenched fist, and then back to her face. Her eyes were so full of anger and loss that she carried with her from some other place. He could recognize it, but he could not decipher it into something intelligible, nor could he force her into providing him answers. The roiling in his chest that had propelled him forward felt heavy and poisonous. Everything had somehow gotten twisted up, but he could see it now. _I can't do this,_ he reminded himself. _It's not what I want anymore._

He took a step back.

"No."

By now, he knew that Six was always trying to plan one move ahead of everyone else, but from the open confusion on her face, she clearly was not prepared for him to say that. The clouds he didn't even know were in his mind rolled back, just for a moment, and he could breathe normally again. It was almost physically uncomfortable for him to give in to her, but he tried to remind himself of the things that were more important than maintaining his pride. _Take this anger from me and replace it with something upright. Help me be humble._ He took a deep breath and felt a shaky calm descend upon him, and although it was small, he knew it was an answer. He looked at her, and the words came to him.

"I'm sorry. I was wrong to say that to you."

She still looked confused, but something in her eyes had softened. 

"It's okay." She said, halting, like she wasn't sure if he was going to recant his apology. "I'm - um. I was being an asshole." She looked down at her feet, struggling to get her words out. "I'm..." she winced like she was in physical pain. "Also sorry?" 

Now, he was shocked too. 

"You have nothing to apologize for." 

"Yeah, I do. I really do." She sighed and looked over her shoulder. "Well. Fuck."

"I know what you mean."

She looked up at him, and his heart wrenched so hard he almost couldn't stand it.

"Okay." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "So, that got out of hand. Are we good?"

More than anything, he was tired of fighting. He thought about what it might have been like if he were a different person, and the two of them could be normal people with one another as God had intended. He could put his arms around her and he would know that things were going to be all right between them. They would know with certainty that the sun was going to rise on both of them and they'd have a new day to look forward to. It was tempting to imagine, but that life was not his.

In his selfishness, he was trying to control her, but he knew now that what was between them could not be an exchange. Whatever he felt could only be given, without demand for reciprocity.

"Yes." 

"Okay. Good." She went over the the table and rummaged around in her bag.

An uneasy silence fell between them for a few minutes, and Joshua tried to collect the thoughts still scattering around his mind.

"We have a big day tomorrow." Her voice was quiet.

"Yes." He matched her attempt at conciliation. "If all goes well, you'll be on your way out in two mornings."

"Right. Two more sunrises." She picked up a shirt she'd missed at the foot of the bed and began to fold it up, not the way he had shown her. "If all goes well."

His eyes landed on her rifle that leaned against the wall next to them. He picked it up and looked down at the tick marks.

"Why don't you keep this in the storage with the rest of the guns? You don't have to just leave it lying around."

She gave him an odd look.

"I'm leaving soon. Why bother?"

He crossed to the firearm cabinet and began to rearrange the pistols and shotguns.

"I should have done it sooner, but it's not too late to find a place for it. Now, you should sleep. We've stayed up too late already."

"We kind of tend to do that."

He felt her eyes on him as he lifted her rifle into the cabinet. She was probably nervous about not having it within arm's reach if she needed it. He was closer to the entrance and he'd never allow anyone or anything past him, but he wanted her to feel safe.

"You have your pistol?"

"Well, yeah. Of course."

"Good. I don't want to leave you defenseless."

"As if you could." She smiled and ran her hand along the blanket. "You have no idea how many knives I have hidden in this bed right now."

After how horribly things had gone tonight, it shouldn't have been possible for him to still smile, but he felt the corner of his mouth turn up.

"I should have known." He turned to check their supplies for tomorrow, and over his shoulder, it sounded like she was getting into bed. Several moments passed, and he thought she'd fallen asleep.

"Joshua." Six's voice cut through the silence. "You were right." 

"About what?" His hand paused on the gun he was moving. 

"All that stuff you said about me. I think I was so pissed off because you were right. I just thought you should know." 

He didn't quite know what to say. Regret washed over him again. 

"It doesn't matter." 

"I think it matters a lot, actually." Her voice was slow, like she was already half-asleep.

Joshua looked up at the wall in front of him and tried to figure out what she meant by that. He decided not to turn around, and went back to straightening up the boxes of bullets until he was sure she'd fallen asleep. He sat down and tried to focus on sorting the ammo out.

The memories all hit him at once like a great wave. Images of his old life paraded before him, blurred together and hazy, slipping by him as quickly as those days had turned into years. He thought about the fires that sparked up in the empty camps and towns after they were eradicated of all life. Thousands of times over, he was the one holding the torch. Wherever he went, destruction followed, marking his path in the trail of spent bullets and burning flesh and crucified bodies behind him. He tore down the world so Caesar could create it anew, and for so long, he was successful. It used to be the only thing that made sense to him. 

And then, finally, Joshua let himself think about the moment when everything crashed down - when he was not the one holding the torch, and nothing made sense. That day, countless people were there, all staring at him, but his eyes were on Caesar.

It was Caesar, not Edward. It had to be. Over the years, Caesar had slowly consumed Edward, but in that moment, he knew it was over for both of them. Joshua knew he was about to die with his whole life having amounted to nothing but misery and pain, but he wanted to take Edward down with him in the only way he could. He needed Edward to witness what they'd turned into. 

Joshua knew Caesar so well that he thought he saw him almost crack, but in the end, he persisted, his face a blank mask as he watched his men pour the pitch and light it. Maybe there was still enough man left behind the monstrosity that one day, it would all get through to him. Perhaps there would be some nights when he would lie awake, alone, and stare at the torchlight flickering on the side of the tent walls, and some part of him would regret what he'd done. Caesar could try to erase him from history, but he hoped Edward would never get the image of him burning to death out of his head. In his last moments as Legate, he was so filled with raging resentful hatred that there were no other parts of him left.

He was different back then, trapped in such darkness and sin, a bitter and hateful and lost man, no longer recognizable to him even in echoes. That person he spent three decades being was nothing but a stranger now, one he would rather not think about at all.

His hand tightened on the box of bullets, and he knew he would need a more substantial distraction. The guns were all clean and ready, and there was nothing more that he could do. A glint of silver caught his eye, flickering in the torchlight. He reached into the box next to the desk and removed the piano wire. Some of the loops were in disarray. He set about untangling the wire. It made his hands ache, but he needed something that could still his mind. He wasn't going to sleep tonight. The low, steady hammering in his chest uncoiled and consumed his heart and his throat, and he knew there would be no rest for him - not yet, not while the worst sins against God and His children went unpunished. The world around him was on fire, and God called him to make it right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays to all!! Sorry for the delay, this week was a little busy for me with the holidays, but updates should be more regular now.


	27. XXVII

_One. Two. Three. It's got to be empty now._

Joshua lowered his gun like Six knew he would, but the White Legs were still coming at them with no sign of stopping. She was counting his bullets for him; he obviously wasn't anymore. He ducked to her side behind the rocks she was using for cover. She snatched the gun out of his hand and exchanged it for her own pistol. The Virgin's face stared at her from the grip before she closed his hand around the gun and pushed him away.

"There's more. Go." He stepped out from behind the boulders and raised her gun without wavering. His finger pulled the golden trigger, one resolute shot after another. She looked down and crammed bullets into his gun.

He returned and they switched pistols again.

"This is like, at least second base, right?"

"Stop joking around and focus." He flipped the safety off of his gun.

"Who says I'm joking?" She tilted her head. "And right back at you. Behind you, actually."

More gunfire boomed, and he turned to fire at the people running toward them. Joshua was always too reckless in a fight, but today was different - he was bordering on careless. _He's not thinking anymore._ He'd barely spoken to her on their way to the Three Marys, and seemed lost in some kind of single-minded focus, like there was nothing else going on around him. She got to her feet and joined him. A thunderbolt rumbled in the distance, and gray clouds gathered above them.

"Come on. Let's finish this up before that storm rolls in."

She turned around and beckoned to the rest of the Dead Horses and the Sorrows behind them, and they all moved forward together. After all of the effort they'd put into getting their little group together, Joshua barely seemed to even notice they were there. Several times, Six had to communicate directions or ask them questions herself, which was already nerve-wracking enough without the language barrier.

They only made it a little ways down the canyon before another group of White Legs ambushed them from above. _Only five. Not bad odds._ Six planted the stock of her rifle against her shoulder and carefully dispatched one of them. His body fell straight down onto the rocks.

"Good." Joshua breathed next to her. The gunfire told her he was working on the same group. She aimed at another man and her bullet went sailing well past his head. The man was still moving, swift and erratic. She took a deep breath and waited, anticipating where he'd go next. Her finger pulled the trigger and her target finally fell.

The last two of them turned and ran away back toward the rocks. By the limping movements one of them was making, Six could tell one of the Dead Horses must have gotten a shot on him.

Joshua raised his gun and shot at their backs.

"Hey!" Six lunged forward and yanked the back of his shirt. "Don't bother with them. Let's keep moving." With another tug, he finally lowered his gun. The delay in his reaction was noticeable, like he was in some kind of haze. She thought of all of the times she'd aimed her rifle at the makeshift armor of Legion soldiers as they fled from their camps, and how good it felt when all of her thoughts and feelings were stripped away and the world narrowed down to the width of her scope, and a sick chill moved down her spine.

He glared at her, but lowered his gun. She remembered one of the few things he'd said to her today: _This is an extermination._ At the time, she'd just slid her gun into her holster and shrugged with no objections. Now, the hard look on Joshua's face was making her reconsider.

Those doubts settled into her stomach as they continued. Every other part of their plan was working just as it should have. _It's too easy,_ she thought. The White Legs were putting up a hell of a fight, but slowly and surely, they were cutting their way down the canyon. When they made it past the caves, she allowed herself a cautious optimism. _We've almost made it,_ she thought, and dragged the back of her glove against the tiny droplets of rain clinging to the eye panels of her helmet. _I think we're going to make it._

Joshua craned his head around the valley, and Six instantly knew that their real problems were about to begin. He said nothing, but his movements were enough: the way his feet angled away from the rest of the group, and the way he lifted his eyes to the canyon like there was something at the end that was visible to him alone. Six knew what he was about to do, and she was goddamn furious.

"This is taking too long. I'm going to find another way around." He didn't look at her.

"Like hell you are," she retorted. "That wasn't the plan. We're supposed to stick together, remember?"

"Stay with the others." He looked down at his gun as he cleared the slide. She stormed through the group of people, who parted to let her through to him. He finally met her gaze, and she saw the rage in his eyes was burning too high. He was too far gone to listen to reason. She grabbed his arm, hard, and shoved him back against the rock. He let her with only perfunctory resistance on his part. His mind was already elsewhere.

"You're going to get yourself killed." She pressed her forearm against his chest, pinning him against the canyon wall, and the anger pounded harder in her head. "Or worse. This is a terrible idea. You need to listen." He caught her arms in his hands and removed himself from her grip with hardly any effort.

"Don't follow me." He met her eyes for just a second. "God willing, I will see you on the other side."

"No," she insisted, but it was over and he was gone. She stared at the spot he had been and heard the thunder crack behind them. Everyone else looked at her, fidgeting with their weapons, momentarily at a loss. The silence was huge and uncomfortable. Every muscle in her body wanted to run after him, but she knew if they stopped now, everything they'd worked toward would be swept away in the blink of an eye. _If we lose here, Caesar's Legion gets stronger,_ she reminded herself. It was up to her now to hold it together. She took a deep breath and looked around at the people gathered near her. All of them were unsure of what to do next. Joshua's absence was nearly as tangible as his presence.

"We'll keep going like we planned." Six stepped forward and hoped her voice wasn't shaking too badly. She wasn't a leader, but it looked like she was going to have to step up and act like one. "Follow my lead."

Small drops of rain began to dapple the top of the stream beside them. They spoke among themselves in hushed tones, and without Joshua there, she was so afraid they were going to leave her standing there alone. To her surprise, when they all turned around, their eyes were on her.

"We are all with you, Courier Six," Dancing Flame said. She could have nearly hugged him, but she restrained herself. Their work wasn't over yet.

"We should stay in a tight group." She gestured with her hands, and hoped they understood each other well enough. "You." She pointed at two of the Dead Horses. "Stay in the back and keep your eyes high." Together, they all tore their way forward, shooting White Legs as fast as they could blink the rainwater out of their eyes.

She only told them to stay back when they finally reached the White Legs encampment. The majority of the fighting had to be over.  _There can't be many more,_ she told herself. _What the hell is Joshua doing?_

Two gunshots sounded through the rocks, and she had her answer. She bolted toward the camp. Two dead bodies were face down in the rapidly rising water.

Joshua stood over a man who was cowering in the water, and for a moment, it was like his vengeful God really existed. The rain beat down on them harder, as if he had commanded it to fall himself. She was confused, until he lifted his gun to the base of the man's skull.

 _Fuck. That's Salt-Upon-Wounds,_ she realized. Joshua and Daniel had both mentioned what a cruel butcher he was. As he knelt in front of her, his arms raised over his head in a futile attempt at protection, she felt sheer terror - not at him, but at Joshua. She'd killed plenty of people, more than she could ever count, but she'd never shot a kneeling man in the back of the head while he cried.

Six thought about what Daniel told her. _He never learns._ She knew at once that he had been at least half right, and she was an idiot for not seeing it. She didn't see it because she didn't want to, and now the ugly truth had finally caught up to her and forced her to look. _I made a mistake._  She could have fallen to her knees with the despair that realization brought her. 

In that moment, her mind wasn't on Salt-Upon-Wounds. Six didn't know anything about him or who he was. What happened to him didn't matter to her. Her mind was on Joshua, and how bone-chilling he looked looming over a frightened human being; somehow both sinister and natural, as if it was exactly what he was born to do. The muzzle of Joshua's gun pushed the man's head forward, and she was able to fit all the pieces together and see the whole picture. The fact that he wasn't dead already meant that Joshua was reveling in it, like a dog playing with a rabbit before snapping its neck.

For a brief second, Six saw what Benny's horrified face had looked like underneath her, and what she'd wished she'd known before she put her hands around his throat and snuffed his life out without a second thought. She won, but he got the last laugh, because she had to live with his ghost every time she closed her eyes. _I was alone when I did that. No one was there to see me._ Joshua wasn't alone now. 

 _What do I say to make him stop? What are the right words?_ Joshua was still talking, and the muzzle of his gun pushed the man's head forward again.  

Six took her helmet off and started screaming at him. With the flash floodwater rushing around their knees and the wind whipping around them, she yelled a string of borderline nonsensical pleas and curses at him until the inside of her head matched the roaring around them. She screamed fragments of what Daniel had told her and words that Joshua had read to her at night. She tried to tell him that she was sorry for encouraging him before, and she was wrong, but things didn't have to be this way.

The torrent of words flooded out until her voice cracked. The painful edges of breath tearing against her throat gave her another milestone. It was the first time she had actually yelled at anyone since she woke up in Goodsprings.

 _There's nothing I can do to stop this,_ she thought, even as she threw every part of herself against him like she was finally losing her mind.  _I can't control this. It's up to him. It has to already be in him_. She thundered louder, and he spoke even more quietly than usual, and they went back and forth for what felt like an eternity, both of them coursing with anger too big for them to hold.

In the end, he lowered his pistol. It wasn't what she expected.

"I won't." He said, so quietly that she almost didn't hear it over the pelting rain. "I won't."

Salt-Upon-Wounds fled, but neither one of them watched him go. The water rushed up, swelling around her shins. Joshua stayed frozen in the same spot, his fingers on the trigger guard, his eyes fixed on the ground. The rain soaked his shirt and his bandages and made them cling to his face and arms. She closed the distance between them and put her hand on his arm.

"We need to go." She yanked at his sleeve, but he didn't respond, as if she wasn't there. "Joshua. Fucking hell. Come on." She squeezed his hand hard enough to get his attention, and finally, he looked back at her. 

"Thank you for staying with me. I couldn't have done this on my own." He pressed his hand into hers again, much more tentative and soft than she had been.

She nodded and looked down, unable to respond. They slouched back to the camp, slogging through the flooded ravine. She took her coat off and threw it over his shoulders as if it could do anything to keep the rain off of him, and he was too stunned to refuse it. Her mind was reeling and her throat hurt, and she couldn't even remember what exactly they had just said to each other.

For a long time, they didn't speak. They had just shown each other their worst selves, and for that, there were no easy words.

They all made their way back to the camp, to the cheers and shouts and the hands clapping them on the back, but she was merely suffering them. Her head felt like it was going to split open.

Follows-Chalk kissed her on the cheek and shook her by the arms with exhilaration. When she didn't react, he leaned back and looked at her face. 

"Are you okay, Six?"

She nodded, but doubt clouded his bright blue eyes, and he pulled her into a hug. For once, she was grateful, and she let herself lean against him for just a second. He patted her on the head, a comforting if awkward gesture. It made her nearly crack a smile. 

"Thanks." 

He gave her the big smile that she was going to miss seeing.

"It's no problem. We watch out for each other." He gestured at the group that had gathered around them. "Now go on. You have a lot of people who want to talk to you." 

After tolerating a crushing hug from every single person present, she staggered into Angel Cave. She needed to get into clothes that weren't rain-soaked and blood-spattered. She should have guessed, but Joshua was already back there, unwinding the sodden bandages from his hands.

"Six - "

"I don't want to talk to you right now," she said. "Now turn around and don't look at me."

"Six."

She was silent as she took off her armor. Her chest felt absolutely empty, and her head was still pounding.

"I won't look." He sighed with what sounded like acceptance.

"I won't either," she responded. She turned to face the wall, and pulled her shirt up over her head and threw it to the side. The fire from the torchlight danced on the stone in front of her.

"How is your leg?"

She tilted her head over her shoulder, and saw him dropping the shirt off of his shoulders. He was still facing the wall, and she could see the bandages that wrapped around the shifting muscles of his upper back.

"We're not talking, remember?"

"I thought we weren't looking, either," he said, still staring at the opposite wall.

She rolled her eyes and returned her face to the wall as she pulled the clean shirt over her head. 

"I'm sorry for leaving you, Six." His voice bounced off of the rock behind her.

"I know." 

"I'm glad you're all right."

"Same here. You had me worried there for a minute."

"I was wrong to disregard you yesterday. I - " Silence fell between them, and for once, he seemed at a loss of words. It felt like he always knew what to say, and such a silence felt unnatural coming from him.

"I want revenge." His words were leaden and slow, nearly choking out of his throat. "Against him - against Caesar. Against the White Legs, too. I want to take from them what they took from me and my family - " He sighed with resignation, and his voice grew sad. "In this life. I want them to suffer and die in fear and pain. I am angry. I want them to feel it, to make it God's anger instead of my own - to justify the things I've done." She heard him inhale. "And I wanted you to believe me, as well. I hid the truth from you. I can't ask you to forgive me, but - "

"I forgive you," she cut him off. "You have to sort your shit out. But you and me? We're fine."

"You can't mean that."

"Look, honestly, I'm pissed off at you, and I'm going to be for a while." She shrugged. "But I'll get over it. I forgive you."

"Why?"

The question was daunting. She stared at the wall and scrambled for a response.

"I don't know. It's hard to explain."

"Try, please."

She rolled the hem of her shirt in her fingers, then paused. "No, I mean, I can't explain it. I don't have any reasons. I just do."

He was dead silent.

 _It doesn't make sense,_ she thought. _I don't forgive anyone, except this time I do, because it's him, and he's different._

She lifted her head up to the wall and cut her thoughts off as soon as she realized what they were actually trying to tell her.  _So this is what this is supposed to feel like._  It was another first.

She tucked the edge of her shirt into her pants, and at once, she saw what was ahead of her. One more step forward, and she could end up getting hurt. It was a risk she could not afford to take. She'd never thought she could care about anyone like this, and that wasn't even getting into all of the complications that arose because it was him. The mess swirling around in her head and her chest was overwhelming and frightening and confusing all at once. She took a deep breath and let her thoughts clamp down on her emotions before they ran away from her control completely. It was time to pull back.

 _I'm so dumb. I can't do this._  She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to make sure her voice didn't sound too serious.

"Just try to make this epiphany stick, okay? I won't be around to go chasing after your ass anymore." She cleared her throat and looked at the wall. "Can I move now?"

"Yes."

She turned around and walked away without looking at him.

"I'm gonna go see everyone else. I need to say my goodbyes."

Six left him alone in the cave and walked down the passageway as fast as her feet would take her. That particular goodbye was one she wanted to put off for as long as possible.


	28. XXVIII

"Where is the courier?"

Joshua directed the same question to Follows-Chalk that he'd been asking all night to anyone who would listen. The scout tugged at his ear.

"Uh. Don't know. I saw her earlier. Maybe she went to sleep." His eyes darted to the side, then back to Joshua.

 _Not likely._ It had been hours since he'd last seen her. The Dead Horses were still celebrating, and the fires blazed into the dark early morning skies. The scent of woodsmoke drifted around him, along with the hum of laughter and chatter. He scanned over the clusters of people gathered around the fires. They were all hugging and holding each other, with their hands on the shoulders and backs and wrists of their loved ones.

"Joshua?"

He looked back at Follows-Chalk, who took a deep breath.

"Um. She seemed a little sad. So maybe now is not the best time." He rubbed the back of his neck, as if for some reason he was afraid of how Joshua would respond.

"I see. Excuse me."

Follows-Chalk looked alarmed, but Joshua barely noticed it as he turned to go. He walked out of camp, just following his instincts. A fork appeared in front of him and he chose the path that wound up higher, around the sides of the cliff. That's what she would do. He walked for some time alone underneath the stars, and he realized he was following the way she had taken him on the morning they dug a grave together shortly after she first arrived in Zion.

He made it to the top of the cliff, and his intuition was correct. A sitting figure was silhouetted against the deep blue sky near the edge of the cliff. She was hunched over, legs crossed, staring off the edge. She looked over her shoulder when the ground crunched under his feet, but it was too dark to see her reaction. All of the rocks she'd collected were in a pile in front of her.

"Finding better company with the dead than the living?"

She vigorously wiped her eyes and looked up at him. The clouds had rolled away, and in the starlight, he could see that the corners of her eyes were watery. 

"I thought I'd come say goodbye to our friend." She tilted her head toward the grave and cleared her throat. Her dejection hung over her like a gray cloud. It was the first time he had ever seen her truly sad. 

"May I sit with you?" 

She nodded, still looking confused as he settled down next to her. After a few moments, she spoke again. 

"There's a party going on. Big-ass fire and everything," she mumbled. "Looks fun. Why aren't you with everyone else?"

 _Because you're out here,_ he thought.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," he said, his eyes moving up and down her.

"Yeah. I'm not really in the mood for celebrating." She picked up one of the rocks in front of her, and tossed it between her hands. "Wanna throw these down into the canyon with me?"

"Why are you throwing them away?"

She swung her legs against the side of the cliff. It made him wish she'd move back from the edge.

"They're too heavy. I can't take them with me." She wiped her eyes again. "They're just rocks, anyway. It was dumb to pick them up in the first place."

He picked up one of the gray stones. It was so smooth that he could see the moonlight reflecting on its surface.

"I have a better idea. Why don't we leave them up here instead?" They both looked over their shoulders at the grave behind them. Joshua turned his gaze to Six and continued. "You don't need to get rid of them. They'll remain here always."

She turned the rock over in her hand, and set it on the ground next to her. "Okay. I like that idea."

The corner of the eastern sky was barely beginning to lighten. Joshua took a deep breath and kept his eyes on the pale blue swath that gradually spread wider.

"I want to thank you again. Your help has ensured that Zion will remain secure."

"It's no problem." She waved her hand. "It's a nice piece of real estate you've got here. I wouldn't want you to lose it."

"Do you know what the word Zion refers to?"

She pointed out at the canyon. "Here, right?"

"Right. But the word has several meanings to us. It also refers to a state of being - a group of people who are pure in heart. It's something we are called to build with one another."

"Good luck with that," she scoffed. Her thumb ran over a crevice along the smooth stone in her hand. "It's a nice idea, but I don't think it's possible."

"At times, we all fall short of being the people that God wants us to be. It's a struggle. That doesn't mean we should refrain from trying."

Her fingers stopped moving along the stone.

"Okay. I think I'm finally starting to get it. It's one of those things that - what's the saying?" She put the stone down. "It's about the journey, not the destination, right?" 

"If that's how you want to look at it. I don't see it that way. I believe with all of my heart that there is a destination, and that I will be with God when my spirit leaves this earth."

Joshua wasn't sure if he was imagining it, but it seemed she was leaning closer to him.

"Ah, see, I don't know about all of that."

"I do."

"We can agree to disagree." She smiled at him, and the corners of her eyes turned up. "Or, how about this: we'll find out what happens eventually, right?"

"You'll find out. I already know."

"Oh, whatever." She rolled her eyes. "You're impossible."

They sat in silence as the pale blue light spread through the sky, but he saw the smile lingering on the corner of her mouth. After a few moments, she sighed.

"I get really down whenever I finish something like this." She ran her hands over her knees. "It's like I throw myself at this fixed point, and then it happens, and it's over and behind me, and I just feel lost again."

"I'm sorry. I hope you find peace wherever you travel next." He had no details, and it was vague, but he meant it with every fiber of his being.

"Thanks. It's nice of you to say that."

The sun was beginning to crest over the mountains. They both watched it for a moment. Right now, the sky was painted only with blues - dark near-black ones that faded out to oceanic ceruleans.

She put her hand on his knee. The world stopped turning. He looked up at her face, at her mouth, and then back at her eyes. All of his reasons why he shouldn't touch her went flying away, forgotten as if he'd never even had them. He tried to figure out what he should do next - put his hand on top of hers, or maybe she'd let him touch the side of her face if he tried to kiss her. It was wrong, but he'd gladly take her right here, with her hair tangling in the dust next to the grave they'd dug together. He'd do anything that she wanted him to do.

"Stop bouncing your leg." She smiled her teasing smile, and then, tormentingly, pulled her hand back. "You're driving me up the wall."

He stilled the leg that he didn't even realize he'd been shaking, and beat back the wicked thoughts spiraling in his brain. He'd misunderstood, and had been a mere second away from making an awful mistake that he'd never be able to undo.

"Are you worried about something?"

"No." He thought about making up some other excuse, but she seemed to accept it. _Don't ruin this like you've ruined everything else,_ he scolded himself. They were both quiet for some time. He tried to stop imagining her underneath him, and forced his mind to a more righteous track.

'Well," he said. "I know it wasn't what you planned, but we are all glad you found your way here."

"We?" She lifted her head up and raised her eyebrows.

He faltered.

"I." He sighed and folded his hands in his lap. "I wanted to thank you again for what you said to me earlier. I wasn't thinking clearly, but I thank God that He brought you here - " he paused, his brain locked in combat with his mouth. "Brought you to me. I will be forever grateful that our paths have crossed.”

“To tell you the truth.” Her voice sounded hesitant. “I'm grateful too." She ran her finger under the collar of her shirt. "Some of the stuff you've said - well. Being here made me realize I haven't really been handling some of my problems as well as I could. You've given me a lot to think about." 

"I understand. You've made me - " he paused, trying to word his sentiments correctly. "Reconsider certain things that I had become closed off to."

She looked down.

"Well, damn. That sounds serious. All good things, I hope." 

 _No,_ he thought. The past two months had been some of the most difficult in recent memory, but the good moments were better than he thought possible. They reminded him that as long as he was still alive, the pain would never fully leave, but there would always be some kind of good to walk toward.

He looked back up at her face as a peace rolled over him, gentle as a morning rain, until he forced himself to look away. For a moment, they watched the sun rise, ascending higher in the sky. The blues gave way to golds and pinks and oranges, as breathtaking as the first sunrise that must have broken over creation.

"So," she looked down. "We did it. We're both still alive, somehow. I guess I'll be going back now."

He almost didn't hear what she said, but then reality crashed down around him. More than anything, he wanted her not to go. He looked down at the bandages on his thumb, and told himself that it was for the best that she left. _She'll be happier back in the Mojave,_ he told himself. _It's where she belongs._

"You'll be careful, won't you?"

"Absolutely not." She leaned toward him. "Come on, I thought you would have figured that out by now."

"Just try," he said. "There are a great deal of people who care about you." 

"No promises, but I guess I can agree to try." Her nose crinkled up like it did when she was truly happy. "For you."

"Meeting in the middle yet again. I suppose I'll have to accept it."

The smile stayed on her face, and it made him feel even better that he had caused it. 

"Thanks, Joshua. For everything."

In that instant, he was so incredibly thankful before it gave way to regret for everything he had ever done that led him to this point. She started to stand, and he rose first and offered her his hand. They gathered the stones together and placed them at the head of the grave. It felt like it was just yesterday when he'd first followed her out here. He followed her down the trail, staring at her back and forcing himself to accept reality. _This is the right thing to do._ They made it back to the entrance of the camp, and he moved closer to her side.

"I think I'm gonna head out now." She looked up at the mountains ahead of them, and he tried to stop the reeling in his chest. "I might as well not waste the daylight."

"It would be better if you left tomorrow. You should rest." 

"I'm okay." She shrugged. "I can get on the road now. No reason to hang around here any longer, I guess."

No matter how hard he tried, he could not tell her what she meant to him. No words would come to him. He hoped if she didn't already know, she would eventually see it someday.

"I'll get your bag." He walked in front of her. "Let me do it."

He walked into Angel Cave, and picked up his Scripture and ran his thumb over the worn cover. He crossed to the place where her bag sat and slipped it into the side pocket. Perhaps she would find someone else who would read it to her. He said a prayer that her journey would be safe and the road would be clear. For half a moment, he almost expected her to come down the passageway of the cavern, but there was only silence. He zipped her bag shut. That would have to be enough.

Joshua exited the cavern, and saw that the rest of the Dead Horses were gathered around Six, hugging her and wishing her well. He set the bag next to her and stepped back. Follows-Chalk kissed her on both cheeks and threw his arms around her in an enormous hug. He lifted her a few inches off of the ground and spun her around. She laughed and slapped him on the back.

"Put me down!"

"Fine. You're heavy anyway." He stuck his tongue out at her, and she frowned like she was pretending to be angry. He tightened his arms around her. "I'm just going to miss you so much." He set her back down. She gave him a push on the arm.

"Please don't cry."

"I'm not crying!" He gave her another hug and patted her on the arm one last time. More of the Dead Horses came forward to give her hugs, which she accepted much more stiffly.

Finally, she was standing in front of him. He stared at her face, trying to memorize every detail. _The darkest brown eyes. The scar beneath her lip. The new scar on her cheekbone._

He wasn't sure what they were supposed to do next, until she decided for them. She took her glove off and held her hand out to him. He reached forward and clasped it, and she gave it a small shake. It stung. His thumb pressed into the smooth skin on the back of her hand.

"Goodbye, Joshua." She tried to smile, but for some reason, it didn't reach her eyes.

He had an urge to put his arms around her and pull her into his chest, or kiss the top of her head, or grab both of her hands up in his. He did none of those things. He'd gotten to have this, and it was enough. 

"Goodbye, Six."

He could have held her hand forever, but it had gone on too long already. He let go. She put her gloves back on and hoisted the strap of the bag onto her shoulder. He put his hands in his pockets.

"Did you pack extra ammunition?"

"Yep." She patted her bag.

"Do you have enough food?"

"Yes."

"Is your coat warm enough?"

"Yes." She rolled her eyes and finally gave him a real smile. "I'm gonna be fine."

"I know."

It was true. If anyone would be fine, it was her. She was the most resilient person he'd met in a long time. She walked away. The rest of the Dead Horses waved at her. He stared at her back until she was nearly gone. Finally, she peeked over her shoulder, and her eyes were on him. Even from this distance, he could tell. He gave a small nod that he wasn't even sure if she could see, and she turned around and continued walking. When she'd walked so far that he couldn't see her anymore, he lifted his eyes to the snow-capped peaks in front of him, glinting in the sunlight. It was difficult, but he said a long and honest prayer of gratitude.

 

 

"Everything all right, Joshua?" Follows-Chalk set the box down next to the desk. His blue eyes were soft with concern.

"Yes. Thank you." Joshua looked back down at the table.

"You seem tired."

"I am."

All of the Dead Horses were busy rearranging the camp and putting up more tents to accommodate the rest of the tribe moving in. The past three days had been celebratory: the warriors were going to be reunited with their families and friends who had been in hiding farther up the river. The Sorrows had returned to the Narrows, as well. Follows-Chalk had been helping Joshua clear out the cave, and Joshua couldn't miss the concern in his demeanor. He wished he could do a better job of hiding his mood, but he'd never been good at that. Whenever he was working in the cavern, he still expected to hear Six's footsteps. At night, without the sound of her breathing, everything felt too silent. The adjustment to being alone again was painful enough to feel physical.

"Joshua Graham." He heard Waking Cloud's voice. It was nearly breathless. His head shot up at the urgency.

"Yes?"

"We have a visitor. " He ran his thumb along the table. It was unusual to have anyone coming by at this time of the year.

"In the valley? Bring him here, then." He tried not to sigh. It was just something else he'd have to deal with, although his heart wasn't truly in it.

To his surprise, instead of a somber expression, a playful smile spread across Waking Cloud's face. Six followed her down the passageway, rubbing the side of her face and looking apprehensive. Her bag was slung over her shoulder and her helmet was in her hands. His heartbeat sped up, but he was still confused. _She's hurt?_ He looked her up and down for injuries. It was possible that there might have been White Legs stragglers hiding in the valley, and he was worried they might have attacked again.

"Six?" He rose from his seat, and took a step toward her. "I thought you were going. Is everything all right?" Waking Cloud looked away and hid her mouth behind her hand. Six's forehead creased.

"Uh, well..." She looked down at her feet. "It's snowing."

"And?"

"The roads are bad?" Her voice sounded smaller and more doubtful than he had ever heard. _This is beyond strange._ She shifted from side to side, then cleared her throat. "The path out of here is blocked. I didn't think about it when I left..." She trailed off and searched his face for some kind of reaction.

"Oh," he said. "I see."

"Guess you'll have to wait out the snow, then!" Follows-Chalk chirped.

Joshua started putting it all together.

"Yes," he said, slowly, still staring at her. "I suppose you will."

"You can stay with us." Follows-Chalk walked to her and put his hand on her arm. He paused, and turned to Joshua. "If that's okay with Joshua, of course."

He hardly noticed it, or anything else around him, because she shifted her posture and her coat fell back. She was holding his Scripture in one of her hands, against her side.

"Right, Joshua?" Follows-Chalk pressed.

 _I suppose she received the message after all._ His gaze rose back up to her face.

"Yes," he said, more quietly than he intended. The relief in her expression was palpable, and she broke into a smile, stunning like the morning sun ascending over the mountains.

"Come on. Let her get settled in." Waking Cloud grabbed Follow-Chalk by the shoulder and led him toward the entrance. 

"I have to show you the tent I made later! It's a little crooked, but it works."

"Sure thing." She waved her hand. "I'll come by and look at it, okay?"

After they departed, it was so quiet that Joshua could hear the torch crackle behind him. The only thing he could think to do was walk toward her. He had no idea what to even begin to say to her.

"So...hi." She tucked her hair behind her ear.

"Hello."

The smile dropped off of her face.

"Sorry. I know I was dead set on leaving, but. Y'know. Sometimes things don't go according to plan. Is it okay that I'm here?"

His eyes fell on the Scripture in her hand again. _My Scripture,_ he corrected himself, and the possibilities that fact carried felt weighty. He put his fingertips on her elbow, so light that he wasn't sure if she could feel it. He didn't know how she would take it, but if she came back, that might mean something. 

"Yes."

She didn't pull away.

"Okay. That's a relief. I'd be feeling dumb as hell right now if it wasn't." She looked down and ran her fingers along the cover of the book. "What's going on in here?"

"We're using this area for common purposes now. It will be for storage and shelter for the ill. Things are changing."

"I see that. So, where should I set my bags?" She tugged at a strand of her hair. He picked her bag up for her, and touched the back of her elbow again. 

"Come with me. I'm sure we can find a place."

They walked out of the cavern together, and his gratitude soared so high that he couldn't even begin to fathom it. As she walked beside him, all he could do was simply feel it. 

 

 

Six settled back in as if she'd never left. Joshua watched her and Follows-Chalk attempt to set up a tent, and as it collapsed and they dissolved into a fit of laughter, it struck him again how blessed he was. The next couple of days slid by like dreams. Every time he caught a glimpse of her across the camp, he gave a small thanks to God.

She was busy helping the others with rearranging the camp, but he could tell she was getting restless again. Fortunately, there was no shortage of work to be done. A few of the tribal leaders had mentioned wanting to acquire a stronger radio antenna in order to broadcast that Zion was safe and open for caravans. They'd asked him about obtaining one from a ranger station, and he immediately thought of her. She seemed to enjoy that kind of work.

He found her in the morning sitting next to the fire, heating up water for coffee. 

"I have something I'd like you to do." 

"There's really no rest for the wicked, is there?" She held her hands out over the fire. "Okay. Hit me." 

"We need a new antenna for our radio beacon. There are a few locations that could possibly still have one. I thought you might be able to help." 

"Sure. No problem." 

"Good. Take someone with you for safety. Think about it, and let me know when you're leaving." He turned to go. 

"Okay." Her voice came over his shoulder. "I thought about it."

He spun back around. 

"Who's going with you?" 

"You." 

He knew it was a bad idea. They'd spent time together over the past two days, but rarely alone for more than a few minutes, like something had cracked open between them, no longer hidden, and both of them were too afraid to confront it directly. He didn't know if he could handle it without trying to ask her more questions.

"I can't." He put his hands in his pockets. "Ask someone else." 

Six clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and leaned forward.

“Did you forget how to shoot that pistol, or something? ‘Cause I can grab some soda bottles and we can go up in the hills and show ‘em who’s boss.”

“No,” he shot back, almost forgetting his hesitation. “I have business to attend to here.”

She rested her head on her hand and gave him a sly glance up through her eyelashes, and he felt his resolve start to waver. 

“Hey, war chief. The war is over. You’re technically unemployed right now. Come help me.”

He stared at her for a moment, silent. 

"It’s going to be cold,” he said, slowly, hoping he wouldn't regret this.

“Great. I’ll go find us some warm clothing. It's still pretty early. We could leave right now, actually.” She bounced to her feet, and then stopped. "Seriously, though. Is that okay with you?”

The prospect of spending several hours alone with her in the wilderness after the tumultuous week they'd just gone through was too much. They'd arrived at a point where he had to talk to her about whatever was going on between them. This would be a good opportunity to confront her about the questions he'd been mulling over since she returned.

“Yes. It shouldn't take too long. We'll be back before nightfall." 

She gave him a thumbs-up, already walking toward the cave. 

"No problem. Meet me out here in twenty minutes, okay? I don't want that damn snow to get any higher." 

 

 

Six said something, but the fabric over her mouth muffled it. All Joshua could see of her face was her eyes and eyebrows, but they told him that she was trying to say something pressing.

"What did you say?"

She tried again, but he still couldn't understand her. He lifted one end of the scarf and unwound it from around her face. Gradually, her nose and mouth came into view.

"I said." She enunciated more clearly. "This. Blows."

"I thought it was important. My mistake." He started winding the scarf back up around her face.

"No, hey - "

She raised her hands and tried to stop him, but he wrapped the fabric around her mouth. Her eyebrows creased, and another muffled word escaped.

"I didn't catch that."

"Pendejo." She yanked the scarf down around her neck.

"Excuse me?"

"That's your word of the day, pinche pendejo."

Joshua didn't know that word, but he had enough context clues to figure out approximately what it meant. 

"I'm sure whatever you just said was kind." 

She glared at him until she couldn't pretend to be angry anymore. Her nose started to scrunch, and the rest of her composure soon collapsed into a dulcet laugh.

"You know me. I'm very kind." She bit back her smile and rubbed her arms up and down.

"This is the most I've ever heard you complain about anything. You live in a desert, and this bothers you?" He gestured around them at the thick white snow blanketing the valley. Joshua couldn't be more pleased at the beauty of it, but she had grimaced and insisted on bundling up so heavily that her fur coat and scarf nearly swallowed her.

"Uh, yeah? This is way worse than the heat."

He knew she hated it, but she looked radiant in the snow. Every tiny snowflake that caught in her coal black eyelashes was visible, and he nearly lost himself watching them drift down and melt against her warm skin. She was so distracting that he couldn't even bring himself to be annoyed about her complaints as they trudged down the trails.

"Joshua, if you were really my friend, you'd shoot me again. At least I wouldn't have to freeze my ass off."

He shook his head and kept walking. They should have made it to the ranger station hours ago, but it was nowhere to be found. It was something he should have noticed earlier, but he hadn't been paying close enough attention. He turned to her as she frowned down at the map.

"Six. Admit it. We're lost."

"I'm not lost." She lifted the map up and stared at it for what felt like the hundredth time in the past two hours.

"We're not on the right trail. We keep going higher."

"Trust me."

He snatched the map out of her hands and held it above her head.

"We're lost." He looked over his shoulder. "And the sun's beginning to set."

"Goddamnit." She shifted her bag to her other shoulder, and he thought about the situation for a moment. They'd been walking for so long that there was no chance they'd make it back before well into tomorrow afternoon. They might as well wait for daylight.

"We won't make it back by nightfall. We should find somewhere safe to camp."

"Okay," she responded, slow, like she had some kind of reservation. "If you think that's best." He folded the map up and handed it to her.

"I do. And I'm navigating next time."

"Oh, sure. I'm the mailman, after all." She waved her hands in the air, her indignation returning. "This is kind of my whole skill set, but whatever you say, cariño."

"I don't know that word. What does it mean?"

She stared at him.

"It's a bad word. A really nasty one. So, anyway." She pointed up the trail. "I say we keep going this way."

"Fine. Let's find a structure of some sort, if we can. It's only going to get colder tonight."

She gave a frustrated sigh, and then stopped. 

"Hey, wait. I think I see a building up there." She pointed higher. "There?" 

He followed her gaze and saw it, too. A wooden wall peeked out against a rocky tower that soared up into the sky. It might be decrepit, but anything was better than no shelter.

"It looks like another ranger station. I'm not familiar with it." 

They climbed up the narrow path, twisting and ascending rapidly up the cliff. Six was quiet as she led the way. He stared at her back, and in that moment, with his all of his joy at the snow and the sunset and her, his heart felt light, and he felt himself getting braver.

"May I ask you a question?"

She didn't turn around.

"Sure."

"Why did you ask me to come with you? Why not someone else?"

She stopped.

"Uh..." she looked behind her, and it struck him that she seemed more nervous than he'd ever seen her. "Because...um. If I have to be cold and miserable out here, I'd rather you be here, too?"

He stared at her, and for just a moment, he entertained the possibility that it meant what he thought it meant.  _Of course not,_ most of his brain said.

But then again, it might. It was the first time he could seriously imagine it, and that was something, at least. He'd been as patient as he could for her, but this was too much. _I have to talk to her tonight. I need an answer._ It could be yes, or no, or any other variation of response, but the lack of resolution could not hold for much longer. 

"Whatever." She kicked a rock off of the trail, and her artlessness was as unusual as it was endearing. "Come on. Let's get inside before I freeze to death." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pardon the delay!


	29. XXIX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up this chapter is long as hell sorry  
>    
> Also: next chapter probably won’t be posted until Tuesday or Wednesday cause I’m on an impromptu vacation!

_Don't try to fuck him. Just be calm. Act like a normal person for once. Don't -_

"It's locked."

Six's mental self-admonishment was thankfully interrupted by Joshua rattling the doorknob of the ranger station way too loud. At least this was something to focus on.

"Allow me." She stepped past him and knelt down to open her bag.

She had only realized what she was about to put herself through immediately after she'd suggested staying out here, but it was too late. More than anything, she hoped that there was more than one bed in this cabin, because otherwise she didn't know how they'd work around that problem.

Six thought about how much she hated gambling, and realized this was kind of a similar situation. It wasn't her typical way of doing things. She liked to line up all the pieces of a plan until she was nearly assured of a straight shot to victory, then make her move.

When she'd opened her bag and found that book a day out from leaving the camp, her heart raced with the knowledge that he had left it for her. Stuffing it into her coat pocket and turning back around had been a gamble, but at the time, it felt right. No one had ever done anything like that for her. It was thoughtful and sweet and beyond what she thought he was capable of, and she thought that maybe, in that roundabout way of his, he was trying to tell her something.

 _I guess I was wrong._ He was being friendly, but he hadn't made any kind of move to continue things further. She really shouldn’t have expected anything more from him. The truth was that he just wasn't into her, and she was trying not to wallow in her disappointment. _It's not personal,_ she attempted to reassure herself. _I have plenty of game with everyone else in the entire damn world except him._ It was the first time she'd ever liked anyone this much, but she reminded herself that's all it was. She would deal with it until it went away and she could inevitably use it as a reminder to never develop feelings for anyone ever again.

There was no use in being upset. It was probably for the best that they just kept it friendly. Coming back was worth it just to hang out with him for a little while longer, even if it wasn't what she'd hoped for. That was part of gambling: sometimes, you lost.

Six rummaged through her bag for her bobby pins while Joshua leaned against the wooden wall. He kept throwing glances at the valley over his shoulder, then abruptly staring back at the ground in front of them, and she realized what was going on.

"Are you scared of heights?"

"No." He crossed his arms and planted his back against the wall. "I'm not afraid." She stared at him, waiting for him to crack and admit it, and he finally looked down. "I don't care for them. I'm fine." He put his hand on the railing and muttered. "I don't trust this wood. It's rotting in places."

She pointed at the door with her screwdriver.

"Give me a sec and I'll get us inside."

Six could understand why he was freaked out. She had no problem with tall places, but being up here almost made her nervous, too - the lonely cabin jutted out from what appeared to be the highest rock for miles. The air even felt colder than it did at the bottom of the canyon. This might as well have been the top of the world, for all she knew.

"I'm sure there's a legitimate reason for you to possess these skills."

She looked at him over her shoulder.

"Petty theft is always legitimate."

She crouched down on her knees and stuck her screwdriver into the opening.

"Good evening. I'm Courier Six," she whispered, and applied pressure to the handle. "Nice to meet you. You're a little rusty, aren't you? No problem. We can figure this out." She jiggled the bobby pin in the keyhole, and felt it stick.

"What on earth are you doing?"

She turned around, and he was staring at her like she had two heads.

"Getting us inside."

"Who are you talking to?"

"Uh…" She pointed to the keyhole. "The lock. Obviously."

He shook his head.

"Obviously. Excuse me."

She narrowed her eyes at him and went back to her work, slowing down and lightening her grip. The lock was nearly rusted shut, but she thought she might have a shot at getting it open if she was careful.

"Come on baby. Come on." She whispered into the keyhole. "Please." She wasn't one for superstitions, but this was the one exception: she always had to talk to locks while she picked them. It helped her focus. She felt the tumblers line up and lift away. "That's it." She tried the knob and pushed, and the door creaked open a few inches.

"I'll go put our things down." Joshua's voice broke her concentration. She stuck her screwdriver into her bag and stood up.

"Let me check for traps and stuff first. I seriously doubt anyone's been up here since before the war, but let's be careful."

"Lead the way."

She pulled her pistol out of her holster and pointed it down while she walked toward the door. It was still cracked open, so she crouched down and pushed it further, grimacing as the stale air trapped in the room hit her nose. There was no sound aside from the creaking of the floorboards under her feet. She walked around the perimeter of the room, then holstered her gun halfway through. There was nothing alive here, but she continued her inspection. A shotgun was rigged up on a table, but it had already been tripped. She turned back to Joshua, who was standing in the doorway, and pointed at it.

"Looks like someone was here once. Probably a long time ago." Gingerly, she lifted the gun and checked the chambers. Empty. She folded the barrel and set it aside. She pushed open the door to the back room, which contained nothing but a pile of mops and thankfully, not one, but four cots. She leaned around the corner.

"You can come in now, it's all clear."

Joshua stepped beyond the doorway and put his gun back in his holster. Her eyes began to adjust to the dim light, and she glanced over the dusty crates and cabinets. Instead of helping her check out their surroundings like he usually did, he stopped and leaned against one of the crates. 

"I think we need to - "

A reflective surface caught her eye. She gasped, and Joshua's head whipped around to find what she was staring at.

"Oh, look. A jukebox." She walked over to it and pressed a button. "Holy shit, I have no idea how they even got this thing up here. It's so heavy." The machine was unlit and covered in a thick layer of dust. She stared at her reflection in the glass, then shook her head and remembered he'd begun to speak.

"Sorry, what were you gonna say?"

He tapped his fingers on the cabinet next to him like he was rolling something around in his mind.

"It wasn't important."

She considered asking him again, but she just shrugged and walked back out of the cabin and hoisted their bags up on her shoulders. She turned around, but Joshua was in front of her.

"Oh, I -" Her breath caught in her throat as she almost ran into him.

"Let me." He held out his hand. She just stared at it, momentarily shaken into silence. "The bags?" He added, with a hint of confusion in his voice.

"Oh. Right. Thanks."

He brought them inside and set them down against the back wall. Six removed her first coat and set it on the table where the shotgun had been set up. There was a set of enormous double windows on the wall opposite her.

"I don't think this is a ranger station." She looked around and took her next layer off. "It looks different than the others, you know?"

When she finally got down to her shirt, she pushed her sleeves up and turned around. Joshua was standing over the jukebox, looking inside the glass. _He likes music,_ she remembered. The Dead Horses had their own musical instruments, but they were probably nothing like what he had growing up.

"You know, if you want, I can try to fix that." Her voice seemed to startle him slightly.

"Really?" He looked back at her, and the hope in his eyes wasn't even concealed. "I’m not familiar with them.”

She rifled through her bag until she found her repair kit.

"I've seen plenty of them in Vegas. I'm gonna take a look at it. It's not like there's anything better to do up here." She looked behind the machine. No plug. That was good. She knelt down and pushed the jukebox further away from the wall so she could access the battery.

"Can you get some light in here or something? I can't see shit."

Joshua removed his coat and his vest and laid them neatly on the table next to her pile of clothes. He lit the candle lantern she thankfully had the foresight to pack, and brought it over to where she was sitting.

She unscrewed each of the four screws in the corners of the back panel and pulled them out, putting them one by one in her mouth.

"I can hold those for you."

"It's no problem," she mumbled around the screws.

"Here." Joshua knelt beside her and held his hand out. She looked at it with hesitation.

"Uh…" She pulled the screws out from between her lips and dropped them into his outstretched hand, soft and muted against the white fabric covering his palm. "Thanks."

The wires connecting the battery looked frayed. That wouldn't be too difficult to fix. She took her electrical tape and tore off a few tiny strips. Joshua was still staring at her intently. As she frowned at the bolt holding the battery down, a frown crossed his face too. She stopped and looked up at him, hesitating. 

"Should I - do you want me to explain to you what I'm doing?"

"Yes. I would like that."

"Okay.” She patted the side of the jukebox. “Listen up. Here's something you're probably never gonna need to know how to do, but...what the hell. There's never harm in learning something new."

He already knew enough that all she needed to do was point out a few unique parts of the machine and explain how she was checking them. He didn't do anything but listen to her speak and intently watch her use the screwdriver. After reassembling everything and replacing the cover panel, she banged on the machine and it roared to life, colorful lights blinking.

"There we go." She admired the lights moving back and forth along the glass. Joshua's eyes were fixed on it, too. She stood up and put a hand on the corner of the machine. "If you ever find another one of these down in the canyon, now you know how to get it working again. They play all kinds of music." She hit the buttons on the front panel and watched the records flip until she settled on a song she recognized. "It's no piano, but it'll have to do for now." She pushed the button and watched as the needle dropped. The sounds of a guitar began, and she put her tools back in the bag.

"This sounds like an old song."

"Yeah." She looked at the spinning record. "I know it from when I was young."

They stood there for a moment, listening. It was impossible to know where she'd heard it, and she wasn't familiar with the tune at parts, but recognizing the words gave her some kind of comfort. She'd grown so used to the silence of the canyon that she'd almost forgotten how nice it was to have music playing in the background. As the song ended, she turned back toward the machine and flipped through the records. She looked back over her shoulder at Joshua.

"Any requests?"

He walked up behind her to look, his body almost brushing the back of her arm. The ringing in her chest and ears felt like a rifle shot. She looked back at the jukebox, silently hoping he would hurry up before she made an idiot of herself.

But of course, his God was never that merciful to her. He tilted his head, and then put his own hand on the button, right next to hers, almost on top of it. Their arms were touching now, his resting against the outside of hers. She looked down at their hands as he flipped through the records at a leisurely pace. Was she supposed to have moved her hand? Was it weird she didn't pull away? Or was he doing this on purpose? Did he know exactly what he was doing? She puzzled over that for a moment. _No way,_ she told herself. She tried to talk herself down from the excitement and be realistic. If he actually was interested in her, he had plenty of opportunities to make a move already, and he never did. It just wasn't like that for him, apparently. 

"This one." His voice was soft.

"Okay. Press that button." She pointed to the red square and hoped that her voice sounded even enough. He pressed the button that dropped the needle and turned away from the machine, walking a few steps forward toward the window as the music began. It wasn't a song she recognized.

Joshua opened the double doors on the side of the building, letting in a gust of the cold night air and revealing a view of the rolling mountains and the thousands of sparkling stars above them. It was so incredible that sometimes she thought Zion was even more beautiful at night.

"You know, I have a feeling that might be what this building was for before the war. Like some kind of lookout." Her eyes traveled along the shape of his back and shoulders against the night sky. "Good idea."

"Thank you for fixing the machine. It's been a long time since I heard music like this."

"You're welcome." She crossed the room and set her tools back on the table. "It's no trouble."

"Since you did something for me, I want to do something for you in return." He didn't turn around, but his head lifted like he was looking at the sky. She stopped, completely dumbfounded.

"Okay. What's that?"

"Do you know how to dance?"

Her heart began to frantically speed up as she realized what direction this was going in.

"I don't think so."

He turned around and looked at her.

"You don't think so?" He repeated her words, confused.

"No.” She shifted her weight back and forth. "I meant that I don't know how."

"I think you would be good at it. Would you like to try?"

Six had to restrain herself from reacting with panic. Every other part of her body was screaming at her to get as close to him as possible, but her brain told her this was a terrible idea. She dropped her hands at her sides.

"Like right now?"

He let out one of his rare small laughs and put his hands in his pockets, which for some ridiculous reason turned her on just a tiny bit. _Stop it,_ she told herself. _Act like a normal human being._

"Of course. As you said, there's nothing better to do up here, is there?"

She swallowed hard and wondered why he was putting her through this.

"Sure." She stayed in place as he stepped in front of her. He looked up like he was thinking.

"This is in three-fourths time. Let's try a waltz. Follow my lead." He caught her left hand in his and placed it on top of his shoulder. She made her touch as light as possible so she wouldn't hurt him any more than necessary.

He clasped her right hand and held it up as his left hand settled on her waist without any hesitation, and she felt like she might internally combust. He started to move, and she kept her eyes glued to their feet, trying to mimic what he was doing.

"Step back, then to the side, then forward again." As flustered as she felt, he was being completely professional, like this was nothing to him, and once she saw how calm he was, she was almost able to follow suit and relax for a few moments. After they got the basic steps down, she realized he was looking at her face, which threw her into a panic again.

"You're smiling." His observation was dry, not pushing for any explanation, but she shrugged and gave him one anyway.

"This just seems kind of old-fashioned." Her gaze darted back down as she narrowly avoiding stepping on his foot.

"It was common where I grew up. We used to hold dances at our chapel. It was a way for the younger people to socialize, or meet someone to court."

 _Court._ That was such a stiff and formal word, but it must have been pretty accurate for how he grew up. Six tried to imagine him back then learning how to do this with the rest of the kids his age. He was probably supposed to have found himself a nice girl to marry and have a bunch of kids with. But here he was, decades of terrible mistakes later, teaching some wandering courier to waltz in the lonely ruins of the old world. _I almost feel sorry for him._

"You're off beat." Joshua was barely shaking his head, and she couldn't help but notice how good that half-amusement looked in the lines of such a serious face.

"What do you mean?"

He turned them around, and she tried to keep up with him.

"Don't you hear it?"

"Not really."

He tapped three times on the back of her hand without taking his eyes off of her, a gesture so assertive and natural that it nearly sent her reeling.

"That. It's the beat of the song."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

He frowned at her, then looked back to the jukebox.

"Would something slower be easier for you to follow?"

"Yeah, probably."

They broke apart and he walked back over to the jukebox, and she instantly wanted nothing more than for him to come back and be near her again. He leaned over the machine like he was deliberating on a grave and important matter, and with a consequential air, he pressed the button again. A slow, crooning tune began to play, and the low sound of a man's rich voice crackled with age.

"Oh. I think I know this song. It sounds sort of familiar." She couldn't remember where she'd heard it - maybe it had been recently, in a bar or casino.

They put their hands back into position, and she looked up into his eyes and realized what exactly she'd just gotten herself into, and what she couldn't resist pushing toward.

"This is in the same time signature. Do the same steps as earlier, but slow down." He went on explaining it to her, but she was really distracted by how close his face was. Up this close, she could see the wrinkles around his eyes that faded out into twisted and scarred skin, and it struck her all over again just how ridiculously attractive he was.  _It's not fair,_ she thought for probably the hundredth time since arriving in Zion. There was just something about him that drew her toward him like a moth to a flame.  _And how does that end for the moth?_ The rational part of her mind tried to remind her, but with every second she spent this close to him, that voice was growing fainter.

"You're off beat again. And now you're trying to lead me." His voice was patient. "Try to follow what I'm doing instead."

She scrambled to look down, hoping to hide the fact that she hadn't been paying even the tiniest bit of attention. They took a few more steps, then he sighed.

"Six. You're still fighting me for the lead."

"What does that - "

He yanked her up closer against him, completely eliminating the space between them. Her skin felt like it was on fire at the places where their bodies touched. He stepped forward, pressing his side up against her, and she instinctively stepped back.

"Do you feel that? That's what I mean. When I push forward, you anticipate it, and pull back at the same time. Don’t look at your feet. Feel it."

"Huh." She fought against her runaway heartbeat to keep her voice steady. "Kind of like fighting someone."

"You would say that. But here is a key difference." He turned them again. "We're working together, not against one another."

 _Oh god_ was the only coherent phrase her brain could form, so she just kept it bouncing around in her head. _Oh god. Oh god._

They finally found a rhythm, with occasional corrections from Joshua, and Six looked over his shoulder, through the window at the endless blanket of stars. Out of the corner of her eye, she could tell he was looking at her face, and she dragged her eyes back to meet his. The intensity was almost too much for her, so she focused on keeping her face as neutral as she possibly could. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her staring up at him all wide-eyed and swooning.

 _This isn't in my head._ The thought hit her like a stone breaking the surface of still water. _He knows._

"Something tells me this isn't the kind of dancing they taught you in church." She tried to test the water and give him her best attempt at a smirk. If she didn't find something else for her face to do, she was going to betray herself.

"Perhaps not." The crinkles around his eyes appeared. "But I've learned a few things since then." It didn't matter how proper he sounded. She still couldn't stop herself from interpreting that in a less-than-proper way.

"So." She took a deep breath. "Was this like, your move back in the day?”

"No." His fleeting moment of lightheartedness was gone, replaced with a somber tone. "I rarely danced. I always played the music for everyone else instead."

"Why?"

"I…" he trailed off. "I was shy back then. Especially with people I was interested in."

That couldn't be true. She stared at his face underneath the bandages and tried to imagine him unburned and young and nervous, too scared to chase after some girl he liked. It didn't seem possible. He was the kind of person who just did what he wanted, and it seemed like he’d always been that way.

As they turned, it felt like he was pulling her closer, but she wasn't complaining. She felt the solid muscle of his chest pressed against her, and it made her pause.

"Does this hurt?" 

He was quiet for a moment.

"Yes." His eyes traveled down her face. "It always hurts." She suspected as much, even though it took him this long to finally admit it. "But…" He led them into a turn again, his voice still soft. "It's worth it to me."

 _That was real,_ she realized. He was letting her see something vulnerable. The open yearning in his voice nearly broke her heart. She was so preoccupied with her own feelings that she hadn't even thought about what he must be going through right now. Maybe this was the first time anyone had gotten this close to him in years. She eased her hand higher and let her forearm rest completely on his shoulder.

"Well," she began, hoping she could cheer him up. "I'm sorry your first dance after so long is such a bad one."

"You are a surprisingly uncoordinated dancer." He smiled, and the bandages over his mouth shifted. "That doesn't mean it's a bad dance." He took a step to the side that she forgot she was supposed to be doing too. "Besides, it's only your first attempt. Although it’s hard to believe no one has ever asked you before."

"I'm not exactly the kind of person who does stuff like this. There's no time for dancing in the wasteland."

"There is a time for every purpose under heaven." The good-natured tone in his voice made it clear he was sort of joking with her, in his own way. 

"Not for me." She sounded more solemn than she intended. "I mean, I've seen people dancing in the hotels and stuff, but I'm usually working, or drinking, I guess. I never saw the point in trying it."

"Well, now you know how. And it may seem frivolous to you, but there is a point. Dancing is like playing music. It's not verbal, but it's a type of language nonetheless." His eyes darted up to hers, and stayed there. "Societies may rise and crumble, but people endure. They always invent ways to express sentiments with each other that words alone cannot convey."

That just set off alarm bells in her head. She knew she ought to step back and get herself under control.

 _Fuck it._ She tilted her head slightly to the side, and then her forehead was resting on his chest. Against her, he tensed and drew in a sharp breath. _He's surprised,_ she realized. They stood like that, not moving as much as before, and a jolt of fear flashed over her, like maybe she'd gone too far and pushed this somewhere he didn't want it to go. Her worries were silenced somewhat as he finally relaxed, and his hand swept further from the side of her waist, settling across the small of her back. It was astounding how conscious she could be of a few inches of her own skin, just because his hand was on them. She pushed her head forward, and he pulled her closer against his chest in response. She turned her head a little to the side so her temple was resting on his shoulder as she curled up against the warmth of his body. Behind him, she could see the snowflakes drifting down against the endless night sky through the open window. It was a moment she begged herself not to forget. It felt too good to be true, like it had to be some kind of dream to make sense.

It took her a few moments to realize the record had ended. Silence enveloped them.

"Oh." She lifted her head. He looked back down at her. At once, they both stopped moving. She was agonizingly, acutely aware of every part of her body that was touching his. She studied his face, trying to figure out what he was going to do next. A hundred different ways to arrange the words she wanted to say came to her. _I don't want this to stop. I want to kiss you more than I've ever wanted to kiss anyone in my entire life. I want you right now._  She bit her tongue and didn't say anything at all.

The reality of it gradually became clear, and she wondered how she managed to get in this kind of situation in the first place. The responsible part of her brain tried to tell her that this whole thing had been a mistake. This wasn't just about the two of them. Who they were in the rest of the world outside of this room mattered. _It's all that matters,_ she tried to tell herself as she stared up into his eyes.

"I haven't told you this." Joshua's voice broke into her thoughts. "But I often find it difficult to tell what you're thinking."

She tilted her head, all of her doubts forgotten, and looked up at him through her eyelashes.

"Really? For me, you're way too easy to read. Even under all those damn bandages."

This time when he pulled her against his chest, it was fast and rough, like he couldn't hold himself back anymore. It shouldn't have been possible for them to get any closer, but he was practically leaning over her now, holding her tight against his body, and she tilted her head up, not breaking their shared gaze for a single second. The tension in her stomach radiated outward; up to her pounding heart, down between her legs. There was no movement except for his fingers skimming up and down her spine through the thin material of her shirt.

"Is that so?"

For a second, silence bore down on them. Six heard nothing but the blood rushing in her ears, thumping through her chest so hard that he must have been able to feel it in his own.

"Because -"

"I -"

They both stopped talking.

"You first," he said.

_Fuck the entire world and everyone else in it._

She leaned up so close to him that she was only an inch away from the bandages on his mouth, and before she could lose her nerve, she closed the distance and pressed her lips against the fabric where his were underneath. She wasn't really sure how this was supposed to work, but she was tired of thinking and waiting and wondering.

If he was shocked, he did a good job of hiding it. Without pulling away, he guided her hand to the side of his face. She touched it, trying to be careful, and they tugged the fabric over his mouth down around his chin until his lips were exposed. She had no time to look; she just leaned forward further to meet him.

It started light, complex, probing, like neither one of them was sure if they were supposed to be doing this, or that it might be taken away at any second, but it quickly turned single-minded, an uncertainty that swiftly resolved itself. She could feel the scarring on his mouth, but it didn’t bother her. Nothing could, at this point. His hand cradled the side of her face, and with every brush of his thumb along her jaw she thought she could die this happy. His teeth found her bottom lip, and she sighed into his mouth and wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned up into him. They kissed deeper and deeper until she couldn't breathe anymore, and she planted her hands on his chest and pushed back a little, desperate for air.

He looked down at her, his chest rising and falling, and his face was so grave, like he was preparing for something awful to happen. She knew she should be serious, too, but it was impossible to hold back the smile spreading across her face.

After that, it only took him a second to reach out for her again and yank her closer. He ducked his head and went straight for her neck, kissing up along the side of her throat, and she shivered into him and let out a breathy swear. The warm rough feeling of his mouth on her neck made her give up on catching her air anytime soon. This was something else entirely, something new. It was all-engulfing, like standing in a puddle of gasoline and dropping a match at their feet.

Their mouths met again more forcefully, needy and near-suffocating, raking their hands all over each other like they had to make up for every lost second they ever spent not doing this. She found the collar of his shirt and pulled him closer, and he was so warm and so incredible up against her that she couldn't believe any of this was really happening. She ran her hands up his chest, over his shoulders, down his back, up his neck, finally letting herself touch him like she'd wanted to for so long. The sharp hitches and changes in his breathing against her mouth made her too worked up to hold herself back. She fit her body against his and rolled her hips up into him, desperate for more.

He shoved her backwards, and she didn't know where they were going until the table top hit the back of her thighs. They knocked everything off of the top to clear a space, not even stopping as the old shotgun landed on the floor and broke with a crash. They leaned further down until she found herself nearly on her back, propped up on her elbows, and with resolute purpose, he slid his hand up her thigh and settled in between her legs.

_Holy shit. We're actually doing this._

"Tell me if it hurts too much," she said, hardly able to pant the words out in between his mouth on hers, "and we can stop." He said nothing as his hands slid under her shirt, and she was shaking like a leaf from the pure exhilaration at finally getting him to touch her. She realized her reassurance had been empty, more for her benefit than his, because from the look on his face there wasn't anything on earth that would stop him from giving her what she wanted.

He carelessly tugged her shirt up and her hands went to her neck to help him get it off. She threw it to the side, and he started fumbling with the straps of her bra until she yanked it over her head and discarded it somewhere in the pile of clothing around them. As soon as she planted her hands back on the edge of the table, he stopped, suddenly stone-still.

"You are wonderful.” He was staring at her like he couldn't tear his eyes away. "So beautiful." The weight and sincerity in his voice hit her harder than she expected. She tried to remember the last time anyone told her something that nice, with that much genuine conviction behind it, and came up with nothing.

She took his hands in hers and placed them back on her sides. He leaned over her and ran his hands over her stomach, her ribs, her breasts, all along her collarbones, slow and reverent, like he wanted to feel every single part of her that he could. It was impossible to remember a time when she felt more in her own skin than right now, as his hands traveled over her. The bandages on his palms and the scarred skin of his fingers felt coarse, electric, making her arch up into him for more. He brushed his thumb along her nipple, then swept his rough hand over her breast, drawing a tiny but unabashed moan out of her. Even through their clothes, she felt his cock stiffen against her inner thigh, and her stomach tightened with anticipation. She pushed her hips up against him, but he held her down on the tabletop.

"Wait." His teeth were nearly clenched, like he was having trouble following his own directive. He kissed a trail up her neck and bit down at the end. She let out a curse and shuddered underneath him, and she felt his fingertips brushing over the skin where his teeth had just been. 

"Do you like that?" His voice was in her ear, low and ragged, melting her into him, and she whispered a string of yeses against his mouth before pulling him in for a bruising kiss. She couldn't restrain herself from grinding up against him, but he didn't try to stop her this time. The low, coarse sounds he made into her mouth as he pinned her on the table and pressed his hips down against her had to be one of the best things she'd ever heard in her entire life. The friction between her legs was both too much to handle and frustratingly not enough, and she pushed him back up and tugged on his shirt. She wanted to get as much clothing off of him as he'd allow, and quick, before he made her completely lose her mind.

"Your turn."

The momentum came to a screeching halt. The determination in his eyes was gone, replaced by obvious hesitation. _I wonder if he has any idea what he does to me._

"Can I take your shirt off?" After a pause, he finally nodded, and her hands flew to the buttons on the bottom of his shirt. His hands slowly went to his collar. She was faster, but less precise, so their fingers bumped together roughly in the middle. She pulled the shirt off of him, trying not to hurt him more than necessary. The bandages covered every inch of his body, but she could still see the outline of the hard muscle underneath. The desire she always felt around him hit her full force, like an enormous wave. In that moment, she wished she was better at talking around him, because her mind was jumbled up just staring at him.

She'd thought about sleeping with him so many times, but this was reality, and it struck her that she wasn't sure what he'd be able to do comfortably. She grabbed him by the belt and gently pulled him closer. She lifted her head up to meet his eyes and waited for permission as she tapped her thumb on his belt buckle. 

"Is this okay? Can you do this?"

He liked to act like there wasn't anything he couldn't do because of the burns, but she knew better. This must have caused him a significant amount of pain already, although he was doing his best not to show it. She wanted this so much, but not at his expense. She wasn't going to take anything that he wasn't willing to give.

He caught her chin in his hand and tilted her face up, studying it for a moment with a strange vulnerability. The gesture felt out of place - more tender than thrilling, like ducking out of a raging storm into a moment of shared shelter. No one had ever looked at her like that before.

"Yes."

"And you'll tell me if it stops being okay?"

"Yes." He looked back down at her hand. "Are you sure this is what you want?"

She smiled up at him and tugged on his belt again.

"I want to fuck you so bad."

Single-minded, he leaned forward and kissed her again, winding a hand into her hair. His hand covered hers and guided it to the front of his pants. She barely brushed against the fabric, but she could feel how hard he was, and it sent her stomach reeling with eagerness. She rubbed her thumb up along his length and pressed her palm into him harder. The groan that escaped him was intoxicating, and the fluttering in her stomach and chest worked up higher. After a brief struggle with her pants, he threw them to the side and ran his hands up her thighs, slow and desirous, until he abruptly straightened back up. 

"Excuse me for a moment." His tone was businesslike, and for a split second, she was concerned until he looked down. With a brusque and efficient air that was so uniquely him, he began to unwind the bandages around his hands. _This can't be real,_ she thought, as his scarred skin became visible inch by inch. He didn't rush, and made sure to neatly tuck the loose ends of the bandages back underneath the loop around his wrist.

"That ought to work. Now, open your mouth."

He touched her bottom lip with two rough fingers, she accepted and took them inside. Her lips closed around them and she sucked, and his composure shattered as she saw her own barely-controlled hunger reflected back at her.

The look between them as he slid his fingers out of her mouth made her head too white-hot to focus on anything else. She wanted to do everything and anything under the sun as long as it was with him. _This is different,_ she thought, her brain more clouded and desperate than she'd ever felt before.

With his other hand, he pulled her by the back of her knee to the edge of the table. He dropped his hands between her legs. She was shaking already from anticipation.

"You're so impatient." He was astounded, like he couldn't believe it himself.

"I've wanted this to happen for a long time." Her voice came out much more serious than she intended, and she briefly wondered if that was too much, but her thoughts were flying out of her head too fast to stop and contemplate. Besides, it was the truth. 

He looked back down and slipped his hand underneath her underwear, and his fingers pushed against her. It was too hard and too much at once, but she was so wet that he could work one inside her. She bit down on her lower lip to make herself stay quiet and moved up against his hand. Everything felt so sensitive that the smallest change in pressure was nearly overwhelming. He pressed in a second finger and held them there, barely even moving in and out, and she cursed and writhed and grabbed at his shirt. He pulled his fingers out and rubbed them up higher against her clit, slow rhythmic swipes, and she had to clutch the side of the table as she rolled her hips up against him.

"Good?" His voice trembled so deliciously. She nodded, and her breathing was so loud and harsh, but she couldn't help it. He fingered her again, making no effort to speed up his leisurely pace. As he watched her respond to his touch, he only took his eyes off of her to lean forward and kiss her neck. She nearly lost herself completely in the feeling as it built up higher until she finally swept her hand down his arm to stop him. 

"I can't wait anymore. Now. Please."

He wiped his hand off on the inside of her thigh and pulled her closer. Her hand went back to his belt and he helped her unbuckle it, and she was still shaking as he stepped against the edge of the table. Then, at once, they both realized that it wasn't going to work.

"Ah, shit," she mumbled, and tried to tilt her hips up higher. He clenched the top of the table and dragged it closer, making her nearly lose her balance.

"It's too low." His voice was strangled with frustration. She looked over his shoulder at the room behind him. 

"Floor?" She pointed, and somehow they ended up there. Once her back was on the floorboards, something in him snapped. The earlier restraint was entirely forgotten. His movements were determined and full of force, almost dangerous in their power. If she was any less comfortable with him, she might have been frightened, but the edge in her stomach was pure exhilaration.

The look on his face as he yanked her underwear down around her ankles was nothing short of ravenous, and she kicked them off and went to help him with his pants. He let her unbutton them, but it seemed like he was avoiding letting her look at or touch his exposed skin. _He's not ready for that,_ she realized. That was perfectly fine with her, and she tilted away to let him take the lead. He pushed her back down on the floor fast, leaning over between her spread legs as he reached into his pants and freed himself. He hesitated for a second in deliberation, then spit in his hand and quickly rubbed his it along his stiff cock to wet it for her. It was so obscene and physical to watch that she was aching at at how bad she needed him, desperately grabbing at his body, pushing her hips up against him and pleading for him to hurry. 

She couldn't help it, but she gasped when he first pushed into her. It was slow and it burned but then it was so good, so exhilarating, so much better than she thought it would be. One of her hands scrambled against the floor just to find something to anchor herself to, and then she clutched his arm probably tighter than she should have. He gave a broken exhale as he murmured his encouragements, and the rough tone in his voice made her stomach tie itself in knots. She clamped on his arm harder, and he pushed himself in deeper like he couldn't wait any longer. It was so much at once, and as he slid all the way in and she adjusted to the fullness, all of her nerves heightened until everything collapsed into an absolute pinpoint of silence. She couldn't think straight anymore. Nothing in the entire world existed but them and the wooden floor underneath her.

Then, he started moving, and her breath actually stuttered at how good it felt. She marveled at the change in his expression underneath the bandages as he sank into her: the way the line of his jaw hardened in what had to be pain, how his mouth opened slightly in pleasure. She tugged him down to kiss her again, and she sighed against the warmth of his mouth as he started fucking her faster. A sharp pain stabbed through her as he struck too deep, and she flinched away. He stopped moving.

"Oh, that hurt. Change the angle. Get a pillow or something -"

He gripped her thigh and pulled it up higher, tilting her hips up, and he pushed into her again, controlled and unrushed.

"Is that better?"

"Oh my God." A wave of ecstasy swept over her entire body.

"Better?" He leaned over as he rolled into her and she just nodded, so overwhelmed with the feeling of him on top of her and inside her that she couldn't speak for a moment.

"God, yes, so much better. So -" He moved again, and when her voice broke off into a moan, he sighed and quickened his pace. She bit down on the side of her own hand to stifle the noises threatening to escape her lips. He ripped her hand away and pinned it on the floor next to her head, then lowered his head against her ear. 

"No," he breathed, "I don't think so." He leaned down and sucked on her neck so hard her eyes started to water. She dug her fingers into his back, and he tightened his grip on her wrist. It had to be hurting him, but he didn't seem to care. She lifted her hips up, trying to move against him, and he shoved them back down, seemingly enjoying the power struggle between them. His lips brushed against the stinging skin on her neck, and he growled into her ear, suddenly much more talkative than he'd been before, and she realized he was losing control of himself too.

"You look so good like this." He lost his sentence in a groan, and his eyes got wilder. His hand swept up and down her arm and clenched her wrist tighter against the floor. "Even better than I imagined."

She'd been on the edge of coming the whole time, and she knew she wasn't going to last much longer.

"I'm - " She broke off. He moved his hand to the side of her face, and his thumb swept over her bottom lip. 

"I want to hear you." He was thrusting into her so hard that the floorboards were creaking and his voice rose, more commanding. "Tell me. Tell me how I'm making you feel."

"I'm so close." Her voice was only a whisper, and she clenched her fists against the muscles of his back. He dropped his head against her shoulder and reached down between them, and she gasped again as he started tracing slow circles on her clit that made her hips roll harder.

"You want me to touch you like this?”

“God, yes.” She sighed into his ear. “Oh my god, yes. You’re so good. It's so good - “ 

A string of praises and pleas flooded out of her mouth until her until the wave crested up and crashed down on her. She tried to tell him, but she couldn't form words anymore. Her hands tightened on his shoulders as she cried out. The peak was so strong it was almost too much at once, and she ran her hands all over him, desperate for something to hold on to. Her hips jerked back and forth against him as she rode it out, all of the tension dissolving from her body, and his movements grew faster, more erratic. She twisted her body away from his hand, too sensitive to withstand more pressure, and he started to push back from her, practically gasping. 

"Where should I - “

She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in deeper. He groaned and pushed her into the floor, holding her so tight that it was nearly painful. The warmth flooded her as he slammed deep and spilled inside of her. He came for a long time, slowly rocking back and forth, pressing his lips against her shoulder. As she came back down from the glow of her own orgasm, she felt how light his breath was against her bare skin, and she ran her hands over his back more gently, relishing how undone and ragged their breathing sounded in each other's arms.

When he finally regained some semblance of control over himself, he met her eyes, and she could feel his heartbeat against her own chest. He leaned in like maybe he was going to kiss her again, but pulled back at the last moment. They unwound themselves from each other and he pulled out of her, still hard. She sat up, and he put his hand on her knee.

"Don't move." He struggled to his feet and walked to the back room. She could hear him rip one of the sheets off of the bed in the back. She fell back to the floor and felt her back press against the wooden slats as she stared up at the ceiling, her knees still shaking and her pulse racing. He returned with his pants already fastened back up and the bandages replaced over his mouth.

"Are you all right?" For once, his voice actually sounded like something close to afraid. She stared at the wooden rafters.

"I’m just gonna hang out here for a minute."

He sat on the floor next to her with the sheet in his hand. She was hoping he'd give her some privacy, but he openly stared at her while she sat up and wiped his come off as it started to drip down the inside of her thigh. She tossed the sheet aside and their eyes met, both of them seemingly lost. As her brain came down from the high, reality was starting to filter back into the room. His eyes traveled down to her body, then back to her face, both of them silent with guilt. The air between them felt thick. She desperately wished she knew what was going through his mind.

Fear settled upon her. _Maybe this was a mistake,_ her mind raced. Maybe he really wished he hadn't just done that. She had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do next, and his blank face wasn't giving her any help. There wasn't any script for this. Normally, right now, she'd just put her clothes on and leave, but that wasn't really an option in this situation. A grave look spread across his face, like he was thinking hard about something.

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

"What?" She shook her head, completely confused at what he was saying, and more specifically, why the hell he felt like right now was the time to say it.

"Herodotus. It's an old quote about the noted tenacity of those in your profession." His gaze cut back to her. "And you said the road out of Zion was too difficult to pass through?"

"Oh, stop it." She tried to act angry, but she couldn't stop the grin that spread across her face. She picked up her shirt off the floor and began to straighten it out, shaking her head. He caught her eye and tilted his face down, very serious.

"Did you believe you were fooling me?"

She draped the shirt over her face to hide her embarrassment.

"You're the worst," she said, her voice muffled through the fabric. "I had to maintain my dignity somehow." She heard the wooden boards creaking like he was moving, and the fabric lifted up off of her face.

“May I?”

He was next to her side. She had no clue what he meant, but she nodded anyway. He pulled the bandages down from his mouth and kissed her, slow and soft. The affection behind it surprised her. She let herself lean into his side, and he wrapped his arms around her. They pulled a few inches apart, and she looked up at him, wondering how the hell her luck ended up being this good.

"The roads were really kind of bad. It wasn't a complete lie." 

"That might be true, but I doubt anything could stop you if you really set your mind to going somewhere."

“I guess you’re right about that.” She slid her shirt up over her arms. His gaze dipped back down to her body.

"If you put that shirt back on, I'm just going to take it off again." His voice was matter-of-fact in a way that made the tension in her stomach rise all over again.

"I forgot there was a bed here this whole time.” She tilted her head and gave him a smile. “Do you wanna go get in it?"

He stood, and held his hand out and helped her to her feet. The back of his finger brushed against her ribs, and she knew that even that tiny light touch felt monumental, like she would never forget what it felt like as long as she lived.

 "Lead the way.”  


	30. XXX

As Joshua watched the dots of sunlight marbling across Six's shoulders, it occurred to him that he'd spent much of the last couple of months staring at her back. Usually, in the moments when he was most content, she was walking in front of him while they made their way along some trail, going somewhere together. In the sorrowful ones, she was walking away from him.

Now, as the morning light poured through the window and shifted across her bare skin, he could not decide which kind of moment this one was. The things he was feeling were so strong and conflicting that it was almost impossible to sort them out. He stared at the curve of muscle on her shoulder, and thought first about how astonished he was, like he might actually wake up any second now and realize he'd dreamed it all. 

That morning, he opened his eyes and there was no time that passed between awaking and remembering. It was one continuous stream etched into his mind. His fingertips buzzed with the memory of her skin underneath them. It was as if the seasons themselves had turned overnight.

He was astonished, pleasantly. His eyes fell onto the crescent-shaped scar just beneath her shoulder blade, and then the fear set in all over again.

Late in the night, when she finally collapsed onto one of the cots they'd pushed together, more than anything, he wanted to move closer to her and put a hand on her side, or lie up against her shoulder - anything to continue touching her. Instead, he retreated to his side of the bed, trying to fight back against the panic that threatened to sweep over him. The second her breathing evened out into the familiar cadence of sleep, he gave in and his mind started racing.

In front of him, she shivered. Goosebumps rose on her skin. He reached out and inched the blanket higher over her, trying to move lightly enough so that she wouldn't wake up. He stared at the dark wisps of hair on the back of her neck and ruminated on the things she'd said to him.

_I've wanted this to happen for a long time._

He puzzled over that again. Everything about it was seared into his memory: the exact phrasing, the way her tone and expression stiffened as she said it.

As much as he wanted it to be true, he didn’t know if he believed her. He wanted to retrace all of their previous interactions and see if there was any evidence for that statement. The dull aching pressure on his side from the bed swelled progressively higher, knocking insistently on his thoughts, until he finally had to give in and sit up. Slowly, he got out of the bed, careful not to disturb her.

The pain from sitting up and moving was near-blinding. His back and shoulders stung more than usual from where she'd dug her hands into his skin. That was a reality that he hadn't fully considered: in his imagination, it never hurt this bad. Water welled up in his eyes as he tried to stretch his arms. He knew he would feel better afterward, so he pushed through.

While he awaited the inevitable, he busied himself with anything he could find. Their clothes were still strewn around the floor, so he folded them and laid them on the table. He stumbled and just barely caught himself on the edge of the table. His gaze dropped down, and he saw that he had tripped over one of her boots.

After he'd straightened up everything he possibly could, he decided to change his bandages. They were in a worse state than usual. He ripped off the fabric around his wrists, ignoring the pain and watching as the bandages began to unravel up his arm. He was so distracted by his thoughts that he made it through most of the process by sheer muscle memory.

"You've gotten faster at that."

Joshua startled and looked up, dropping the bandage he was winding around his shoulder, but he didn't see Six.

"I'm in the other room." Her voice echoed from around the doorway. "Not looking."

"Good morning." He paused, and thought about what she'd said. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know." He heard her yawn. "The first time you did this with me there, it took for-fucking-ever, and now I think you go faster."

He looked at the twisted flesh on his arm, and it occurred to him that she might be right. Before, he always unwrapped the bandages methodically, trying to make sure he felt and contemplated every bit of pain that his skin had to give. He supposed that with her there, he'd unconsciously sped up the process so she didn't have to wait so long to turn around. That realization caused a muddled guilt to fall over him like a shroud.

Those thoughts were punctured as he realized what came next. _She's awake._

"How's the weather?" Her voice came from around the corner again. 

"Still snowing."

She groaned, and he heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like her head falling against the wall. He finished wrapping up his arms and put his shirt back on. As he fastened the last button, he took a deep breath and looked up.

"I'm finished."

Six walked into the room. He needn't have worried about what to say to her, because she looked like she was barely conscious. Her hair was ruffled around her face, and he was near-certain that her shirt was on backwards. It was strange to see her moving so sluggish.

"Where's my - " she snapped her fingers. "Um. You know..."

"What?"

She brought her hand to her face to pantomime an action, and he realized she meant brushing her teeth.

"Toothbrush? It's in the front pocket of your bag. On the table."

"Toothbrush. That's it."

 _She's just tired,_ he realized as he watched her struggle with the zipper on her bag. They had slept in the same room plenty of times before, but he was always gone before she actually woke up. Warmth spread in his chest. In an odd way, it brought him some kind of joy to see her stumbling around with her eyes half-closed.

She picked up her water bottle and crossed to the window to brush her teeth. Afraid to break the silence, he stared at her back as she leaned over the railing to spit. Finally, she turned around and rubbed her eyes, her toothbrush still hanging out of the corner of her mouth.

"Do you have any plans for today?"

The question struck him as completely absurd.

"No."

"Okay." She removed the toothbrush and yawned into the back of her hand again. "Let's keep going and grab that antenna. It can't be too far away. Does that sound good?"

He'd forgotten all about that.

"All right." He wondered why they were talking about this right now. She took their map out and unfolded it on the table, then leaned over it.

"Ah. I think I see where we screwed up." Her finger traced along the map. She gathered her hair up and moved it to her other shoulder as she frowned down at the paper. The dark bruises on her neck were the only verification that his memory of the past day was correct, and that he was not in fact hallucinating.

"You cleaned up." She gestured to the clothes on the table. "How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough."

She shrugged and began to put her first coat on.

 

 

Later, he stared at the back of her coat as they plodded along the trail. Without turning around or speaking, she pointed at a patch of ice in their way, and he stepped around it.

_Was it bad?_

He couldn't be certain, but it seemed like she enjoyed herself. The first time, he couldn't help but rush through it, but afterwards he took his time to learn what she liked, reveling in this entirely new facet of her that he'd finally been able to glimpse. Besides, she wasn't timid. She told him exactly where she wanted his hands and his mouth, and he was more than happy to oblige her.

_Is she upset with me?_

That might be closer to the truth. It was all too easy to imagine her regretting it today. Perhaps she was going to pretend it didn't happen and they were never going to acknowledge it. The guilt returned, partnered with a dark surge of resentment.

 _Fine,_ he thought, staring at the rifle bouncing against her back. He should have never acted on such selfish desires in the first place. By now, he ought to have known better than to expect any other kind of treatment. This wouldn't be the first time in his life he'd been cast aside like he was nothing.

Six chattered on in front of him, unusually cheerful, only stopping occasionally to break the ice on top of the stream and fill up her water bottle. He commented at what seemed like the appropriate points, but he wasn't really listening. The unstoppable downward spiraling in his mind commanded all of his focus. She halted again and reached back to rest her hand on his upper arm.

"That's it, right?" It took him a moment to realize they were in front of the correct station. He hadn't even been paying attention.

"Yes."

"Great. I'm tired of walking." She tilted her head up at him, and his heart could have stopped.

"Are you okay? You're being kind of quiet."

"Yes."

She cast him a suspicious glance, then removed her hand.

"Okay then. Let's get going."

 

 

Joshua craned his head up, watching as Six nimbly climbed her way up to the roof of the ranger station. She was quick, but he was getting antsy just standing guard and waiting for her to get back on solid ground.

"How's the weather down there?" She called out to him, leaning out away from the metal scaffolding with only one hand anchoring her and not a care in the world. Joshua shook his head and gestured for her to come back.

She landed back down on the wooden platform, clearly a little harder than she intended, but the antenna stayed in her hand.

"Ouch. That did not feel good." She rubbed her knee as she straightened up. "So, mission accomplished, I guess. Wanna just stay here tonight?"

He froze, unsure of how to respond.

"If that's what you want."

"Yeah, it's about to get dark soon. Let's call it a day."

By the time they'd unpacked their bags and settled in, he had convinced himself that they were never going to speak of it again.

 _That's all?_ Echoed around his mind, like the agony of waiting for the last note in a melody that he couldn't quite read. _That's all?_

He sat down in the armchair in the main room, only halfway paying attention to the book he'd brought. Six had been bustling around the cabin all evening, seemingly finding endless tasks to keep her occupied. She had moved on from oiling her pistol, and was cleaning her rifle on the table. Nothing was out of the ordinary until he heard a few high-pitched sounds, and he realized Six was whistling. Usually, if they weren't talking, she hardly made any noise. It was such abnormal behavior that it made him look up from the page and finally speak.

"You're terrible at that."

It was true. There was no sense of melody or pitch at all, just errant sounds. She looked up from her rifle and smiled at him.

"I don't know how. I'm just in a good mood."

He urged himself not to read too much into that. 

"How's your book?" She leaned against the table and tugged at a strand of her hair.

He looked back up at her face, and realized her eyes were traveling up and down him.

"Riveting." He didn't move a muscle.

"Well. In that case, I wouldn't want you to be distracted." The saintly air in her tone was temptingly insincere.

She ran a finger over the tabletop, and shot him a glance that turned from playful to outright voracious. The possibility of getting close to her again made his hesitation and fear dissipate into thin air. All of the rational decisions flew out of his mind, entirely replaced by the lure tightening and drawing him in again. It was simply too much to resist. 

"Distract me."

She crossed the room to him and took the book out of his hands, laying it on the table next to him. His heart crashed against his chest as he looked up at her.

"There's something I want to try," she said, as casually as if she were talking about their attack strategies.

"What's that?" He tried to keep his voice level, too, despite the blood already rushing faster through his veins. Maybe she really was talking about something mundane.  _Perhaps this isn't what I think it is._

She looked down at him with a calm composure that was unable to mask the wolfish glint in her eyes, and reached up to tie back her hair.

"Let me show you, and if it hurts too much, tell me and I'll stop. We'll see if it works."

_It's exactly what I think it is._

"All right." He barely had time to choke out the words before she settled onto his lap, her legs straddling him.

He noticed she was trying to support herself on her knees, which she spread wide enough to rest on. The pain from the contact would be worse than usual because of the weight of her body. 

"How does that feel? Okay?"

Her eyebrows were furrowed with concern. He put his hands on her hips and pulled her body down on his until he could feel himself hardening against her. The friction made her writhe on top of him.

"That's better, wouldn't you agree?"

The pain in his skin sharpened, but she nodded in response. He pulled her down onto him again, harder, the pleasure radiating out and matching the pain.

Her mouth was slightly open in surprise. He reached up and ran a finger over her bottom lip. Her lips were so beautiful, and the skin was so thin that he could barely feel it. He pulsed against her, and her soft breathy sound told him she felt it too. He dropped his hand down to her neck and caressed the marks he'd left on her skin, as if their claim on each other lasted longer than the fleeting minutes she spent in his arms.

"Oh my God." She shook her head with playful outrage. "You look so smug right now. Grow up.”

He pressed the smile back into the corner of his mouth. Joy swelled up again in his chest, higher than he thought possible. She began to unbutton his shirt, taking her time. His stomach dropped with anticipation. The way she looked at him was suddenly so open and uncomplicated: ardent wonder and desire.

It should have been complicated. It had been so long since anyone looked at him in that way, and he believed no one ever would again, but here she was, sitting in his lap and breathing hard with her eyes fixed on him like nothing else mattered. It made no sense, but the way her hands trembled when she touched him nearly silenced all of his doubts. _It's real,_ he thought with quiet amazement. _I’m beginning to believe her now._

"You're thinking way too hard," she said as she traced her fingers along the bandages over his chest, so light he felt only the ghost of a touch. His eyes trailed down to her chest, which was rising and falling rapidly.

"You're not thinking at all." 

"Yeah, it's nice. Join me?" 

The sharp breath she gave as he barely brushed his fingers over the fabric covering her nipple made his heart pound. He rolled the pad of his thumb back and forth over the stiffening bud, letting her enjoy the friction on the sensitive skin before her soft little sounds made him too impatient to wait any longer. He rucked her shirt up and shoved his hand under it, needing more, and she seemed to agree. She lifted the shirt up over her head and tossed it to the side, and as he stared at the trail of dark hair that dusted down the center of her stomach, all thoughts other than feeling her skin against his were banished from his mind.

The insistent tug at her waistband was all the encouragement she needed to stand up and take her pants off. He held his hands out, and she took them, settling back down against him. He pressed his mouth against her ear, and she twisted away.

“Ah, no. Please.” She laughed. “Don’t touch my ears. I'm not a fan. It feels too weird.”

“My apologies.”

”It’s okay. We’re still figuring it out.” She gave another small laugh, sweet and golden in his ears.

"What?"

"Nothing." She tilted her head to the side and tugged on his shirt. "I don't know. I'm just happy."

Everything in that moment narrowed down to that basic statement, like the rest of the world had ceased to exist. It was so simple and clear. For once, he knew exactly how she was feeling. 

He slid his hands up the hard muscle of her thighs, which he had learned was one of his favorite places on her to touch. Her skin looked soft, but frustratingly, it was nearly impossible for him to feel the sensation against his hands. He ran his fingers over the scars and bumps he found, tracing them lightly, marveling at the change in sensation in his fingertips on the ones that were more pronounced. 

The one on her hip was too flat; no, he couldn't feel it. The one on her temple was vicious enough that he could; yes. The one on her thigh from the stab wound was stark visually, but he couldn't notice the change under his fingers. No. He relished the way she shuddered as he mapped his hands along her body. She leaned forward and planted a string of kisses on the side of his neck. More than anything, he wished that he could feel it, but he tried to enjoy the slight sensation of pressure through the bandages as much as he could. 

She unbuttoned his pants like she'd been waiting to do it all day. _I was wrong,_ he thought, and those words had never brought him more enjoyment. She ran her palm along him, and he clenched his teeth in response. 

"Can I?" She tilted her head down.

 _No,_ his instincts responded for him. It gave him pause. It was easy enough for him to minimize her contact with his skin. Although they'd gotten this far already, the thought of letting someone else see him without the bandages on still made him tense. The scarring wasn't as bad on his lower body as it was elsewhere, but he didn't want to repulse her. She leaned forward, interrupting his deliberation.

"How about this: I'll touch, but I won't look. Deal?"

He nodded, and her eyes stayed locked on his as she reached down and slipped her hand into his pants. The feeling of her hand on the exposed skin of his erection was almost too sensitive. He inhaled sharply, and the glint came back into her eyes. He felt her hand moving up and down his length with a few slow pumps, and he choked down the noises in the back of his throat. She grinned at him, and it occurred to him that he'd never seen her smile more often than she did while they were kissing or touching each other. All of her pretenses cracked, and she beamed at him like he was the only thing in the world she wanted to be looking at.

He slid her underwear to the side, too impatient to bother getting them off. The translucent glistening spot on the thin fabric told him she was so wet for him already. His hand found her hip, and he guided her over him. The muscles of her thighs tightened as she lifted herself up higher and slid along his length, tilting her hips so he slipped against her. 

“Come on.” His voice felt rough in his throat as he urged her on. She held her underwear aside and began to lower down, and a sigh escaped him as his head barely pressed into her. At the last second, she lifted up again. He groaned with impatience and grabbed her hip, and a taunting smile crossed her face.  _She's playing with me,_ he realized. He took both of her wrists in his free hand and shoved her down by the hip.

"You're a tease," he growled, and he kept pulling her down until he sank every inch of his cock inside of her, slow and warm and tight, and the fire in his stomach burned higher. 

He could see that look on her face a thousand times, and he would never tire of it. It was simply the most sublime thing he had ever seen. Her control broke entirely: her lips parted slightly, and her eyes were lit up with pleasure and shock, like it was too much for her body to handle, like she couldn't comprehend it, and best of all, he was the one who made her look that way.

"How does that feel?” He squeezed her wrists, taunting her back.

"So good." She gave a labored breath, staying perfectly still around him, struck into a rare moment of utter compliance.

"Now show me what you wanted." 

Six twisted her arms out of his grasp, seizing the lead back from him as she clutched his wrists, and he was a little surprised at how willing he was to surrender. Her eyes set with determination as she pinned his hands into the top of the chair near his head, and a surge of shock and excitement shot through his veins.

"Good?" She tilted her head in mock innocence, letting him know exactly who was calling the shots.

"You've piqued my interest," he replied, trying to keep his voice steady as she rose up until he nearly fell out of her. When she lowered herself, the sight of her letting out a shaky exhale as his cock slowly disappeared into her body could have made him lose his mind right then and there.

The pain cut through the bliss like a hot knife, and as she moved up and down, languid, tightening her grip on his wrists and pressing them into the chair, it all started to roll together. She closed her eyes, clearly enjoying herself, but for some reason he didn't like it. He leaned forward until their foreheads were touching, and her eyes fluttered open again as she placed his hands on her hips to help her rise up and down on him. When she tilted her head to whisper prickling temptations in his ear, telling him he was allowed to touch her now, the loose curls that had fallen out around her face brushed against the bandages on his face. He splayed his hands out over her stomach and hips, and the simple feeling of her body against his made him wrap his arms around her back, trying to pull her in as close as he could, the pain obliterating and irresistible at the same time.

"Can I touch your neck?" She sank down onto him as he began to answer, making his voice crumble.

"Anything you want," he breathed. "Anything." 

She lightly wrapped her hands around his neck, rubbing her thumbs down along the line of his throat, and he tilted his head back, lost in the feeling of her around him.

"Put your hands on my ass."

He obeyed, gripping her tight and burying himself in her again.

"I've never seen you follow orders this well," she murmured. He shivered and his hips jerked up to meet her. A wicked little smile spread across her face as she spoke against his ear. "Oh, you liked that, didn't you?" The maddening lilt in her voice made him sort of grateful he couldn't blush anymore. "Good to know. Hands back on my hips," she commanded.

His hands flew to her sides as he helped her rise up and down on him. The muscles of her thighs twitched as she took him harder, pleased moans building in her throat, and he had to start thrusting up, matching her movements. He wrested her body closer and held her tighter; brutal and precious to him. Her hands found his throat again, and he knew this was going to be quick, because he wasn't going to last much longer if she kept moving like this. Their mouths met, open and hungry, and the tension in the pit of his stomach rose higher with the harsh sound of their breathing. Her hands were moving all over his arms, his back, his face, pulling him in like she could never get enough; pressing back down on his chest for control, her touch honeyed and bruising.

He ran his mouth along the curve of her breasts, drawing a low moan of approval out of her as he lapped and bit at her salty skin. She rocked against him more desperately, working her body on him exactly how she needed, making his head spin with nothing more than a trembling curse whispered against his mouth.

He silenced her with another long kiss. If he heard her say she was going to come, then he would too, and was trying so hard to wait. A gasp welled up in her throat, and when he felt small shudders begin in her body, tightening around his cock so well, he couldn't help but let out a groan.

"That's it," he murmured low into her ear, urging her on. "Come on top of me just like this."

Her cries muffled into his mouth as her hands clutched too hard on his shoulders. The excruciating, white-hot pain made it impossible to hold on any longer and the rapture consumed him, momentarily overpowering the agony as she held him tighter and pleaded for him to come for her. Everything in his mind went blank as he drove up into her, gripping her hips hard to hold her down onto him, wanting her to take everything he had to give. 

When he came back to himself, he was still rising up into her, the spasms growing fainter as his breath hitched into her hair. She was still clinging to him, breathing hard, her forehead resting on his shoulder, and finally lifted her head to meet his eyes again. The way she looked at him after he made her come was incredible: foggy-eyed and blissful, like he was the most wonderful thing in the world, and for a second, he believed it.

"So? Was your plan executed to your satisfaction?" He pushed a loose curl off of her face and tucked it behind her ear. She straightened up and looked down at him, still in a daze.

"Uh, yeah. I'd say so." A smile broke over her face, one that made her nose scrunch up and her eyes shine, and she buried her head back against his shoulder. "You're actually ridiculous sometimes, do you know that?" Her voice reverberated against his body, and it made his heart feel like it was physically turning in his chest. He rubbed her shoulder blades and she leaned back, quickly glancing down between them.

"So, that's all right, then?" He followed her gaze downward.

"Is what all right?" 

He gestured between them, and she blinked at him in disbelief.

"Are you asking me if it's okay that you just came inside me?" 

He winced at her bluntness, but nodded.

"You weren't sure, but you just did it anyway?" The delight spread across her face. "Like, as long as I'm getting laid, I guess she'll do, I'll be a dad now? Unbelievable."

He looked away, shaking his head with mild embarrassment, and she lifted his chin back up to meet her gaze.

"Hey, relax. I'm just giving you shit for your less-than-great judgement, as usual. Yes. It's fine. Look." She put his hand on her upper arm, and he felt a small bump underneath her skin. "When I got to the Strip, I had the Followers of the Apocalypse stick one of these in me. They do it for cheap. Nice folks." He ran his thumb over the bump, not understanding what she was saying. "It stops you from getting pregnant," she clarified. 

He frowned at the raised skin. "That can't possibly work. I wouldn't trust it."

"Oh, now you're being cautious all of a sudden? Fine." She lifted her hands in a shrug. "Come wherever you want next time. I don't care."

 _Next time._ The implication that they were going to do this again did not go unnoticed. He tried to ignore the hope that it gave him. 

"Is it permanent?"

"I guess they could cut it out. It's just under my skin. That's never gonna happen, though." 

"You don't want children someday?" He asked. She shivered, and he rubbed his hand along her arm.

"Hell no."

He couldn't hold back his surprise. Part of him always wished he'd been able to have a home and a family of his own. It was what he was supposed to have done. Six still had so much of her life left to live, and it was unfathomable to him that someone wouldn't want to take advantage of that.

"Don't you want to start a life at some point?"

"Uh." She shifted her weight, and he grit his teeth at the discomfort it caused him. "This is my life. To tell you the truth, I kind of operate under the assumption that I could die any one of these days. I'm not really fit to be anyone's parent." She clambered to her feet. "Now, let's stop talking about kids before my eye starts twitching from sheer anxiety."

The way she talked about death disturbed him sometimes. _She prepares for it as sincerely as she prepares for everything else,_ he realized. It wasn't right for someone of her age to anticipate death so soon, and so often, but he supposed that was the reality of the broken world they had inherited from those who came before them.

He cleaned himself up and replaced the bandages over his mouth as she began to get dressed. The euphoria was receding fast, giving way to the aching of his body and a remorse that nearly consumed his mind. He would have kept going to make her happy, but it was simply more than he could bear right now.

"I don't think I can continue beyond this."

She looked at him for a moment with dismay, then cracked a smile.

"Oh, you just mean tonight?" He nodded, and her nose crinkled up again. "Don't worry. I'm good. Do you even know how sore I am?" She held her water bottle out to him, and he accepted it, opening the cap to take a sip. “I guess we're gonna have to actually talk to each other instead." 

He said nothing. A curious look appeared on her face as she pulled her shirt down over her head. 

"You look sad." She tapped her finger against her mouth. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Me?"

"No."

"Something else?"

"No."

"The kids talk?"

He paused.

"That's it, isn't it?"

 _There are some things I can't hide from her now,_ he realized.

"Yes. Thinking about family in general. I often took care of my nephews and nieces when I was a young man." He looked down. "It's not that I specifically wanted children, it's just that I always assumed - " he sighed. "It doesn't matter now. Many of my assumptions ended up being wrong."

The humor was gone from her demeanor, and her eyes were soft with concern.

"They didn't make it, did they? Any of your family?"

"No. I am the last one of us alive."

"I'm sorry, Joshua. That’s an awful thing to go through.” 

"God's will." The pain in his heart made his voice catch. "I think about them every day. They did not deserve to suffer for my mistakes. It brings me some comfort to know they are in a better place."

She crawled into the bed and laid on her stomach. For a moment, they were silent, the weight of the past hanging between them. 

"So, you had siblings?"

He looked back over at her. Her voice was tentative, like she was trying to be careful, and she rested her chin on the back of her hand. It wasn't like her to ask him questions like this, and he hadn't spoken to anyone about his family in a long time.

"Five. All brothers."

"Damn. You were the…"

"Youngest."

A huge smile spread across her face.

"No way! Are you serious?"

"I am." He felt his mood lighten a little, and she leaned forward. 

"What about your parents?"

"My mother and I got along well. She would never admit it, but I believe I was her favorite. She loved all of her children, of course, but my brothers were more adventurous - always trying to leave the house. I preferred staying inside." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I think she worried about me."

"Who wouldn't?" Six gave a light-hearted scoff. "I bet you were a nightmare. Probably got into fights all the time."

"No. Quite the opposite. Like I said before, I was shy. Overly sensitive, looking back on it. When I was young, I cried often over foolish things that made me angry. When I became a little older, well…" he trailed off. "I stopped crying, and tried to stop getting angry." Six was still staring at him, her brown eyes wide. _These are nothing but old stories that she has no use for._ "I don't need to ramble on about my past. We can talk about something else."

"No." The earnest tone in her voice was unmistakable. "It's interesting. I want to hear it. What about your dad?"

Joshua thought for a moment. It had been so long, but his father's voice and face were still accessible in his memory, like he had last seen him yesterday.

"He was a virtuous man. He was strict with all of us - himself included. I rarely got into trouble, but I think I confused him more than his other sons. At times, he didn't understand why I was so - " He paused, trying to sort out what he meant to say. Even though he didn't quite know how to explain the dynamic between them, old, long-buried feelings drifted back to him anyway. The ambiguous one that hung over his youth like a cloud, never outright stated, but intuitive to him from a young age: that his father was always comparing him to his other boys, trying to figure out why he was so outwardly different - anxious about following the rules, more willing to stick his nose in a book than try to make friends. Joshua pulled himself back from that hazy recollection. "He didn't know how to talk to me, but I think he tried his best."

"So, you had a big old family with a white picket fence. Were you all happy?"

"Yes."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but…" She rolled onto her side. "Your family - things were okay? No deep dark secrets? They never hurt you or anything?"

"You're searching for some explanation of why I turned out this way."

She looked startled.

"It doesn't sound great when you put it like that, but yeah."

"No. It had nothing to do with them. They loved me." He looked down, and he felt the pain in his chest welling up again. "They were good people. Leaving them is one of my strongest regrets."

He began to ask her a question about her parents, but he caught himself. She'd never answered him before. He decided to leave it open-ended, so she would have room to maneuver around it if she desired.

"And your family?"

"I haven't seen them in a while. I try to think about them sometimes. I don't know if it helps or not."

"Would you like to see them again?"

"Yes." She chewed on the side of her thumb. "But I can't. I don't think I will ever again." The exact circumstances might be a mystery to him, but he still empathized with that feeling.

"I'm sorry, Six."

She sighed.

"Yeah. It is what it is."

He was quiet for a moment. That was the most she'd ever told him about her personal life. He tried to think of other questions he could ask her.

"How long have you been a courier?"

"A while. Years." She rested her head on her hand and lifted her eyes to the wall.

"What age did you begin?"

"I was pretty young." She cautiously looked to the side.  _It's not deception,_ he realized. _She's not deliberately hiding the truth from me. She doesn't know, either._

"You don't know your age." It came out of his mouth as a statement. She looked back at him, her lovely eyes suddenly flat and lifeless. "Do you?”

"No."

That piece of the puzzle slid into place, and truthfully, it didn't surprise him. It was not uncommon for people in the wasteland to be ignorant of their age. Perhaps she had been separated from her parents when she was a child, or they were dead, and she had no idea when or where she was born. 

"You're still young, though."

"I guess." She shrugged.

The trepidation gathered in his stomach, but he figured he might as well get this out of the way now. At least she would not feel like he had kept anything from her.

"Do you know how old I am?"

"Old enough to know better." She pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and settled back down on her stomach. "Then again, I guess we both are." 

"I'm fifty-two."

She picked at a loose thread on the old sheet.

"Okay?"

"Doesn't that trouble you?"

She lifted her eyes and stared at the ceiling.

"Are you trying to scare me off or something? 'Cause even though I can't see your face, I already knew you were old. Trust me. You act like it." He wanted to retort, but she continued speaking. "Also, there's much better scare-off material you could come up with. Your age is, like, the least of the problems we have going on here.” She gestured between them. 

"I suppose you might be right." He readjusted the bandages on his hands. Her lack of reaction surprised him, but still brought him a sense of relief. He looked back up at her, and saw she was still waiting for him to speak. He cleared his throat.

"Do you know any other couriers?"

"Not really. We usually work alone."

"There's one in particular I'm thinking of. His name is Ulysses."

She frowned.

"Doesn't ring a bell."

He couldn't help the wry note that crept into his voice.

"You would remember if you had met him. He's not a man who is easily forgotten. When I first heard of your arrival in Zion, I thought you might have been him."

"Hm, no. Just me." She flashed him a sweet smile. "Sorry to disappoint."

"He means to kill me. I'm glad it was you after all." 

"Aw. That's nice of you to say. I mean, not trying to murder you is really the least I can do, after everything we've been through."

"Your benevolence is appreciated." 

Her eyes lit up like they always did when he gave her teasing back to her. For a moment, it made everything in his world feel right, as if all the awful things they were discussing had not really come to pass.

"Why did you become a courier?"

"I can't explain why I started, but I can tell you why I like it now." She twirled a curl around her finger. "I like the motion. I like going from one place to the next and seeing new things. I tell myself that the weirdest shit always happens to me, but I guess the truth of it is that I like it that way. It gives me something to push toward. Like a goal." Her eyes shifted to him. "Does that make any sense?"

It made perfect sense. It also made him realize at once that things would never work out between them for longer than this. When he first left the walls of his home as a young man, he felt that longing to wander. Now that he was older, all he wanted was walls. He could never live the kind of life she wanted, and she would never stay with him.

He stared at the rough wood grain of the wall and tried not to let the misery defeat him. She was here right now in bed next to him, with her eyes shining. He did not want the knowledge of what came next to poison the time they had together.

"Tell me something about your life in the Mojave."

She looked surprised.

"Like what?"

"Anything. Tell me about somewhere you've been."

Even back when he was first getting to know her, it always surprised him how good she was at telling stories. She'd seamlessly slide from one to the next, her delivery and her descriptions superb. It was like he could imagine he had actually been there with her. Her voice would change inflections, and she'd wave her hands for emphasis, weaving some kind of spell that commanded all of his attention. He wasn't sure how much of her anecdotes were true, but he allowed himself to stop trying to read between the lines and enjoy them anyway. 

After speaking for some time, she coughed and reached for her bottle of water.

"You let me talk for so long! Aren't you tired of it already? I think I might go to sleep."

He looked down at the floor. There was only one bed, and he had no idea what she expected out of him.

"Yes. Give me a moment." He sat up higher in the chair and crossed his arms.

All of his impulses were always too much, too fast, and he tried to remind himself of that. His mind was already running away with the possibilities that this could last.

 _We slept together,_ he reminded himself. _That's all._ It should not grow into anything more on his part. _It will not,_ he decided. He focused hard on that promise to himself. There were so many reasons why this could not go on.

"Joshua." Six's voice was muffled by the pillow. "Stop brooding and say your prayers. Get in bed so I can go to sleep."

He closed his eyes and folded his hands, and his prayer came to him easily. He had so much to be thankful for.

By the time he raised his head and opened his eyes, Six looked like she was asleep. He tried to be quiet as he walked to the edge of the bed. She reached up without looking at him and groped around until she felt the fabric of his shirt, and tugged him down to join her. Carefully, he laid next to her side and wrapped his arm around her. The pain on his chest was searing. She blinked at him, then turned away and moved back against him.

"Oh. You're warm,” she mumbled, sounding half-asleep already. She held onto his arm and pressed it to the soft curve of her breast. He stayed there, breathing in the scent of cold air and woodsmoke mixed in her hair. He shifted his weight slightly, but the burning ache in his skin flared higher.

"Six." A horrible sinking feeling began in his stomach. "I can't do this." She rolled over to face him, and he removed his arm from her side. "The pain is worse on my chest. I'm sorry."

"Oh, I didn't know. Sorry." She twirled her finger. "But I have an idea. Turn around."

He was confused, but did as she said and rolled over. Once he was turned away from her, he felt her body up against his back.

"How is this?"

His back wasn't as damaged as his chest. The pressure of her body against his still hurt, but he could endure it until she fell asleep.

"Good."

"Okay. Let me know if you need to move. To tell you the truth, I don't think I like being on the inside anyway." She shifted behind him. "This is better for me, too."

He drew her hand up over his side and pressed her knuckles against his mouth, then pulled away at the sharp sensation of cold on his lips.

"Your hands are freezing. Is that normal?"

"Yeah? They usually feel cold."

"That can't be healthy. You feel like a corpse."

"That's just - wow. So sweet of you to say." Her voice was sardonic, and he could picture her eyeroll behind him. She was quiet for a moment. "But that means you can feel temperature, though?"

"Only on certain parts. On most places, it's very limited." He tried to keep the bitterness out of his tone.

"So." Her voice rose with a drowsy excitement. "I can put my hand inside your shirt and you won't get mad about it?"

He considered that for a moment.

"Try it."

She slid her hand underneath his shirt and he guided it to a spot on his stomach where the sensation was almost completely gone. He could barely feel the touch of her hand, let alone the temperature.

"Can you feel that?"

"No."

"Oh, perfect." He felt light pressure through the bandages on the back of his neck, and he suspected she might have kissed him. It was such a small thing, but it nearly took his breath away. "Any other fun burn facts?" He stared ahead of him at the wooden wall of the cabin.

"I can no longer sweat on most parts of my body."

"For real?"

"Yes. It can be dangerous when it's hot. I'm more prone to heatstroke."

"I would have never thought about that." She nestled closer to him. "I'd tell you some brain damage trivia, if I could remember any."

"That’s an awful joke," he sighed.

"It's not a joke, though." She ran her hand along his side before he felt her muscles go stiff. "So, are you sure you wanna try this? I can always sleep on the floor. I might try to fight you in my sleep. You know how I am." He felt how her lungs expanded against him, and the deep breath told him that despite her light tone, there was a serious question underneath.

"Yes, I remember. Being punched in the face tends to leave an impression. Besides, I'm not concerned. I've fought much worse than you."

"Oh, don't be so cocky." She propped herself up on her elbow and leaned over him. "In a fair fight, sure. But if I got the jump on you? You might finally meet your end."

He looked up at her face, and thanked God again for this grace that he did not deserve.

"You can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better."

"Don't underestimate me. I'm actually very vicious." She trailed her hand along his chest, even lighter than before. He felt the bandages shifting across his jaw as he smiled.

"I know."

"If you ever wanna throw down sometime, say the word. I'll prove it."

"Are your bedroom conversations always this threatening?"

"I'm going easy on you. Trust me." She ducked back behind him, and drew him closer against her. Her hand slipped back underneath his shirt and settled on the spot he had shown her.

"This isn't hurting you, is it?"

"No. I can't feel it at all."

She laughed, and he felt the vibrations from her chest pressing up against him.

"Oh, man. Look at us. We have all kinds of problems."

"We do."

"But I guess in some ways, we work pretty well together, right?"

His chest tightened hard. He hadn't cried in decades and never would again, but for a second, he thought he remembered what it felt like when he was about to. It was simply too many good feelings and too many bad ones at the same time for him to process. He closed his eyes and with the knowledge that someday, she would no longer be next to him, he savored the feeling of her body against his back as best as he could. 

"I think we do." 


	31. XXXI

"This way?"

Joshua put his hand on the back of Six’s neck and gently steered her to the left fork of the footpath.

"Here."

”That’s the one I was going down anyway.”

He kept his hand on her neck, completely unfazed. 

“If you say so.” 

The fluttering in her stomach was stronger than ever before, but she looked away so he wouldn't see the stupid smile on her face. It seemed like he couldn't go more than five minutes without finding some reason to touch her. He'd put his hand on her back to get her attention, or push her hair back when she looked down at the map, and every single time she'd feel her cheeks getting warm despite the frigid wind stinging her face. She'd never been a touchy person before, but when he did it, it was a different story. 

They talked like usual as they walked back to the camp, except for the fact that the entire world could have been on fire around them and she probably wouldn't have noticed.

That morning, she was reluctant to get out of bed, but she knew they had dragged it out long enough, and it was time to go back.

Joshua woke up second, surprisingly enough. It made her realize that she'd actually never seen him sleeping before. It was strange to see him with his guard down, even for a moment. She let herself watch him for a little while, just admiring the sight of him with his eyes closed and listening to the soft sound of his breath underneath the bandages.

He still wouldn’t take them off in front of her any more than absolutely necessary. It made her heart hurt to see how insistent he was on keeping himself covered. She had a mild curiosity about what he looked like, but at the end of the day, she didn't really give a shit. She wished he could see that. _Maybe I should say something._ Clearly, he was more sensitive about his scarring than he first let on. She got the feeling that he'd allowed her to see more of his skin than anyone else, and on some level, it was kind of a big deal, even if he wanted to pretend it wasn’t. No matter what happened between them, she wanted him to know that he didn’t need to feel so self-conscious, but she didn't want to overstep her boundaries.

If she was honest with herself, she sort of expected this to be more of a one-and-done type situation, but it was already starting to feel like something more. When he got next to her in bed the previous night and put his arms around her, she was taken aback. Holding someone like that while she fell asleep was something she'd never done before.

It was dangerous - too comfortable, too secure. That was crossing some kind of line that went beyond messing around, and she wasn't exactly sure where that line could possibly lead them.

It was still mind-boggling to take a few steps back and come to terms with the big-picture situation. _That’s Caesar's first legate,_ she thought, staring at the side of his face, _and we made out for half an hour and he folded my clothes the next day. Unbelievable._ The whole thing was absolutely nuts in the grand scheme of things. For the first time in a while, she thought about her life back in the Mojave, and tried to imagine explaining this to one of her friends. They were used to her getting into trouble, but this would be a new level altogether. It definitely wouldn't go over well. Raul, in his own loving way, would call her a dumbass, but wouldn't really care that much. Arcade and Veronica would be disappointed. And Boone -

She hadn't even thought about that. Boone trusted her so much, and had been there for her through some of her roughest times, and a lot of that was built off of their mutual hatred for the Legion. If he knew, he would probably feel so angry and upset and, worst of all, betrayed. The thought almost made her feel sick. Six always talked about how awful everyone else trying to control New Vegas was, and here she was, doing something that she would have a hard time justifying to the people who had supported her the most. From the outside, it looked bad. Really bad. She thought of the word that Joshua had thrown at her when they were fighting.  _Hypocrite._ It still stung in her mind as badly as it had when he said it out loud.

 _This is no one else's business,_ she tried to reassure herself. It was possible for her to separate her personal life from her larger aspirations. This changed nothing about her goal to un-fuck the Mojave as much as she possibly could before she finally bit the dust. It was just sex.

 _It's not just sex._ She wished she could take a baseball bat and beat that thought to a pulp so it would retreat to where she’d buried it and wouldn’t bother her anymore.

 _I can stop,_ she told herself. It wouldn't be a problem. Later today, she could tell him it was really great and she had a nice time, but they just couldn’t continue, for a multitude of complex reasons. On a logical level, it was risky for them to even be in the same place for so long. Caesar would love nothing more than to kill his two most-wanted birds with one stone. Joshua would understand that.

That notion exited her mind as soon as it appeared, because she knew damn well she wasn't going to do that. There was only one reason, and it was simple: she didn't want to. When he was with her, it seemed like the sun shined a little brighter and the stars were just a little more clear in the sky. No matter what they were dealing with, it felt like things were going to be okay, for once. Six didn't really know what she was doing, but she supposed they would just figure it out as they went along. For once, she had no plan. That didn't stop the barrage of questions from infiltrating her good mood.

What does he want this to be? _I don't know._ What did she want this to be? _I don't know._ Were they going to do this again? _God, I hope so._

Even just getting him into bed once was well worth the trip out here. She watched the snowflakes gather in the collar of his coat, and couldn’t help but smile to herself. Maybe they just needed to fuck and get it over with and now that the tension was gone, it would be back to business as normal. Joshua was giving her an unexpected amount of physical affection, but maybe he was just lonely. It seemed unlikely that this would turn into anything more serious. 

 _That’s okay,_ she thought, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach. In a way, that would be better. That would solve all of her problems for her; no hard decisions necessary. Getting tangled up further would only make it harder to leave when the time came.

"This is the most snow I've ever seen in Zion." His comment dragged her away from her mental turmoil, and for a moment, they stopped and watched the white specks drift down in the wind.

 _Snow forever,_ a part of her mind said. For all she cared, it could snow enough to bury this whole damn canyon.

 

They approached the entrance of the camp, and as if on cue, they both stopped in their tracks.

"Okay." She turned to him. "Act normal."

He stared down at her and she realized that there was no chance in hell either one of them would be able to approximate anything resembling normal in any situation, let alone this one.

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind." She put her hand on his elbow. "Just be yourself."

He responded with his usual stony look of irritation, except for some reason, she was starting to think it was kind of cute.  _Already off to a bad start,_ she chided herself. She took a deep breath and plowed ahead toward the entrance. People waved at them as they came back. Even in the couple of days they were gone, the camp looked more bustling than ever before. There were plenty of people that Six had never seen before - entire families that had seemingly appeared overnight. A child nearly bowled into her leg, and she elbowed Joshua.

"What the hell?" She whispered, and tilted her head at the child's back as she ran away.

"That's Waking Cloud's daughter."

"Oh."

"The Sorrows must be here."

"Oh." She bit the side of her thumb as she realized what that meant. Daniel was likely here, too, and she didn't know if she was ready to face that conversation. 

"Have you talked to Daniel since the Sorrows came back?" Six tried not to sound too worried. 

"Yes." Joshua folded his arms. "We had a discussion. We've put our differences aside to focus on rebuilding."

That was good to hear. Maybe Daniel wouldn't be as pissed at her as she thought. Six put the antenna in his hands.

"Sounds good. Go give this to whoever needs it, okay?"

He nodded and started off across the camp. One of the Dead Horses stopped him to talk, as usual. Follows-Chalk caught her eye and bounded through the group.

"Hi! You're back." He smiled. "What took you so long?"

"We got a little lost." She pointed at Joshua's back. "Between you and me, he can't read a map to save his life."

"Oh." He leaned in. "I was a little worried you might have killed each other, but I guess everything worked out okay." They both watched Joshua from a distance as the group around him grew. Daniel walked up to Joshua, and the two men started talking. Six sighed, and felt the anxiety spike in her chest again.

"I need to go talk to him. I'm not looking forward to that."

A few seconds of silence passed before Follows-Chalk broke it.

"I think he's mad at you." 

"Thanks." She patted him on the shoulder. "I appreciate it."

He shrugged.

"Just go talk to him. I don't think it'll be so bad as you expect."

They returned their gazes back to Joshua and Daniel, and Six waited for them to stop talking. Then, she remembered it was Joshua she was dealing with, and he'd probably keep talking for another two hours if she didn't step in now. She lifted her chin and walked toward them. Daniel's eyebrows raised as she inserted herself in between them. 

"Hey. I'm sorry to interrupt, but Daniel, can I steal you away for just a minute?"

Both of them looked taken aback, but Daniel nodded with caution.

"Sure. Joshua, give us a moment. I'll be right back."

They started walking to the edge of the camp.

"So." She chewed the side of her thumb and tried to sound casual. "How have you been?" As usual, he wasn’t buying it. They both stopped, and he stared at her, his eyes narrowed.

"You're still here."

"Yep." She looked down. "I sure am. I'll be hanging around until the snow melts. So, um. In the interest of smoothing things over, I think I should...I just wanted to say that - " She scuffed the toe of her boot on the grass.

"Is this you attempting to apologize?" He quirked an eyebrow. "This is entertaining. You're not very good at it."

"That's not true." She bristled, then took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. "Okay. Fine. I'm trying to give it a shot. I'm sorry for blowing you off." She held a finger up before he responded. "I don't regret my decisions about the Sorrows. They wanted to stay, and that was their right. But you were right about some other stuff. I should have listened. Sorry."

"That was at least halfway there." He tilted his hat back. "Look. Thankfully for us all, the tribes are safe for now. That's all I cared about."

"Cool. So, are we okay?"

He put his hand on his chin, then stepped forward.

"I'll be honest. I still don't know how I feel about you. But the fact that you're trying to talk to me about it is...a good thing. So yes. Yes, right now, we’re okay.”

"Fine. I'll take it."

The sun had already dropped behind the mountains, and the Dead Horses began to light the torches around them. He tilted his head over to the group of people by the fire, and they walked back together. Six was still a little uneasy, but she figured that it could have gone worse.

They rejoined the larger group of people, and somehow, she and Joshua found themselves standing next to each other. An endless parade of people came by to talk to Joshua, and to Six's surprise, plenty of them came up to talk to her, too. Small talk wasn’t really her thing, but Joshua said enough for both of them. After a lull in the conversation, they exchanged glances.

"I have a task for you to do." He returned his gaze to the fire.

“Already? You’re merciless.”

"The scouts informed me that some of the White Legs encampments are still standing. They may have abandoned their supplies when they left. Someone should go scavenge the camps."

"Yeah.” She tried to match his serious tone despite the smile threatening to cross her face. "Someone should."

"Take whatever you need. It shouldn't be more than a few days of work."

"Sure. But wait a minute. What if I find something good and have to carry it back? Sounds like a two-man job to me."

He looked back at her, and maybe he'd been working on his poker face, because the only change in his demeanor was that his leg began to bounce.

"Perhaps it is."

"So, as someone who shares my passion for picking through old trash, how would you like to lend me a hand?"

"The souls of the diligent shall be satisfied." If she didn't know him well enough, the indifferent tone in his voice would have fooled her.

"Why don't we ask around and see if there's any other field work that needs to be taken care of? If we're gonna be out there for a few days, then what's a few more?”

"I think that would be prudent."

"Wake me up tomorrow if I'm not up at a reasonable time."

"I will. Thank you for your assistance."

"Trust me, the pleasure is all mine." She used her most shameless and suggestive tone possible, just because she could. "I really want to make the most of my time left in Zion. And you know the area so well. I'm sure while we're working, we can find the time to take a few detours. You can show me around all the best places."

That finally seemed like it was getting to him. His voice sounded a little strained.

"Your...enthusiasm is appreciated, as is your work ethic."

"Y'know, for some reason, it doesn't really feel like work at all these days. There's just so much to see...so much left that I still want to do…"

Finally, his composure broke and he looked away, shaking his head. She almost felt bad, but getting him worked up was just way too much fun to resist. She leaned closer to him, and the backs of their arms touched for a brief second.

”Mi cielo. I'm just messing with you.”

He frowned like there was something on his mind. 

"Caelum." 

"What?"

“That word is too similar to its Latin precursor for you to get away with it.”

The forceful edge emerged in his voice, like he’d turned the tables and now had her pinned down instead. He was back to authoritative as he put his hands in his pockets and straightened his posture. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then?” 

She stopped with her mouth halfway open, suddenly feeling like something in her that she was trying to protect had been laid bare. Calling him nice names in Spanish felt safe, like a secret with herself because she thought he couldn't understand her, but apparently she was wrong. Her thoughts reeled with all of the uncertainty they were staring down. In her mind, she took two steps back and saw it all ahead of her. This was a minuscule moment, a few private seconds no different from any others, but in an instant, she saw exactly where the path in front of her forked. Just as fast, she knew how she was going to answer him.

“Yes.” 

There was no way to be sure, but maybe for another tiny instant, she saw his shoulders relax. 

“Good.” 

The flames devoured the wood in front of them, and she watched the smoke drift up into the sky as she stayed at his side. For tonight at least, she could tell herself that there was nothing else they needed to say to each other. 


	32. XXXII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for kinda aggressive sex? Idk if that’s not your thing you might prefer to mosey along.

_Truly a miracle, if I've ever seen one._

To Joshua's amazement, when he approached the fire in the middle of the camp, Six was already present, if not fully awake. Her head nodded down, but she caught herself after a few seconds. Her eyes closed, and her head fell all over again.

The water in the iron pot over the fire was already boiling over, clearly forgotten. He removed it and prepared the package of coffee she'd already laid out. She opened one eye, then closed it when she saw him.

"Good morning."

An indistinct mumble passed her lips. He sat next to her and handed her the mug of coffee. She finally opened her eyes all the way and held the mug in front of her face, letting the steam rise against her skin.

"You're up early."

She shivered and gave him a sleepy nod.

"Sooner we get going, the better." She sipped her coffee. "We have places to be."

"Such unusual behavior on your part. Are you that eager for another dancing lesson?"

She coughed and put her hand over her mouth. As much as he admired her typical poise, there was some part of him that enjoyed seeing her reaction when he was able to crack her stoicism.

"Damn it." She looked down and shifted in her seat. Perhaps it was due to the cold, but her cheeks looked slightly flushed. "It's like six in the morning. Too early for this shit."

He leaned toward her.

"Am I wrong?"

"No," she mumbled, still not meeting his eyes. With satisfaction, he watched her chew on her bottom lip, and he began to think about all of the tempting ways he could have her once they found somewhere to go for the night. He believed in following up on his promises.

"Are you two heading out again?"

Daniel had stepped up to the opposite side of the fire, holding out his hands to warm them.

"Yes." Six answered, much too quickly to sound natural.

"There is still work to be done in the valley." Joshua replied. "We'll return by the end of the week."

"Well, we'll be heading back north today." Daniel squinted against the rising sun. "Courier Six, if I don't see you again before you leave, then goodbye."

"See ya. Thanks for having me here."

"Thanks for all your help. I hope your trip back is better than your arrival."

They seemed polite with one another, if slightly wooden. Joshua hadn't been aware of any friction between them until shortly after she left. One night, when he and Daniel were hashing out their plans, she came up in conversation. Daniel had given a long sigh. After Joshua prodded him, he took his hat off and folded his hands.

"The courier’s nice and all, but to tell the truth, I feel like there's something off. I can't put my finger on it, but I just don't trust her."

Their conversation went reasonably enough up to that point, but then it took a sharp turn for the worse. The feeling of having someone speak ill of her angered Joshua more than he expected.

"Without her help, we'd be in a much less agreeable situation right now. I won't accept you maligning her character."

Daniel held up a hand.

"Look, Joshua, it's not that serious. You two seemed close, and I think that's great. I don't think she's a bad person. She just rubs me the wrong way."

Joshua didn't know what happened between them, but judging by the stiff way Six waved and watched Daniel walk away from the fire, the unease appeared to be mutual. Whatever it was, Six hadn't said a word regarding it, and even long after Daniel had left, she sipped her coffee without so much as a stray comment.

 

Several hours of walking had passed, but it felt like the sun had climbed higher in the sky in a matter of minutes. For once, their conversation was about nothing important. They'd passed through the soaring rocks, asking one another inconsequential things and delighting in the new information they discovered. So far, Joshua had learned that Six didn't gamble, which surprised him, and that her favorite color was brown, which for some reason, seemed exactly like the kind of thing she'd say.

"Also, green." She held up a finger. "But not just any green. You know that kind of dusty-looking, cactus green? That's great. I love cactuses."

"Cacti."

"Pff." She crossed her arms. "What a bullshit language."

Serious questions hardly ever got any traction with her, but she would happily answer his inquiries about the smaller details of her life. Joshua thought about the first time they'd met, and something else came to him.

"When did you start telling people you were a man?"

"I never told anyone that. I just don’t take my helmet off much. People assume. Also, I kind of like it when people call me mister." Six kicked a rock and it skittered in front of his feet. He sighed.

"Don't be difficult."

"I'm serious. It's really that simple." She shrugged. "And besides, as far as those Legion assholes go, it's better for me, anyway."

Before he responded, he took a brief moment to ask God to forgive him for the awful things that he had helped bring into the world. The Legion left couriers alone, but she'd caused them so much trouble that if they finally caught her, their retribution would be brutal. Clean deaths were reserved for men Caesar had some modicum of respect for, not women who'd embarrassed him several times over.

Joshua bore part of that blame for the nature of that threat, now that he was thinking about it. When he was young, he'd looked away from such immorality so many times that he became numb to it. Cruelty faded into the background of his life, eventually becoming the very foundation of his world. Every individual was merely part of an enemy group to be broken underneath his heel in the most systematic way possible. The men under Caesar's domain were nothing, but the women were less than nothing. They were all cogs in a war machine; their suffering simply a byproduct of forcing humanity into its most productive order. Caesar's constructed ideology was brutally methodical at crushing human lives and feeding them to the monolithic beast of empire, grinding down resistance until there was nothing left but bone and ash, and it was most efficient when deployed with no mercy and no exceptions - the way Joshua did for decades.

He could rationalize it all day long, but ultimately, he knew the consequences of his actions. The world he'd shaped and inhabited probed and exploited weakness like a prize, vicious and hard on those least able to fight back, created in the opposite image of the teachings he'd soaked up through the soft pages and sermons of his childhood - and he simply didn't care. 

And now, looking at the solitary woman in front of him who'd had the audacity to throw a wrench in the unstoppable machine, he cared, and he was afraid. She'd sworn to destroy his old world long before they'd ever met, but if any harm befell Six now, it was one more thing he'd never be able to forget or forgive himself for. If there was anyone he couldn't protect, it was this little heretic who crowned herself challenger to the very beast that threatened to devour the Mojave whole.

For the first time, he considered what might happen if Caesar found out they knew each other. He didn't think it was possible for his guilt to grow any stronger, but the thought nearly crushed him. Caesar would never publicly admit he was alive, but it wasn't difficult to imagine him taking out his anger at his survival on Six. _More blood on my hands._  Fresh horrors seemed to crop up wherever he tread, growing out of the wrongs that he would never be able to outrun as long as he lived. She should never have returned here. He should never have given in and let himself become fond of her. All that could possibly lie ahead of them was ruin - the very same ruin he'd served for decades, now hanging over Six's head and ready to crash down at any moment.

He wondered how she explained that to herself; how she could even look him in the eyes, knowing what he was.

"I understand." It felt like he was trying to swallow a handful of sand.

"I think they know now, though." She sounded crestfallen. "I've attracted a little too much attention. Besides, I'm sure those sick fucks have been spying on me." The map in her hand crinkled as she unfolded it. "We're taking this upcoming bridge, right?"

"Right." 

“Anyway. Let's talk about something else." 

He tried to think of something to lighten her demeanor, and to distract them both from the bleak reality they had found themselves in.

"Do you have anything you enjoy doing in your spare time?"

"Spare time? What's that?"

"I'm serious, Six. What do you do when you're not working?"

"Uh. I like to take long walks in the desert. Kick rocks. Not much. I'm boring, in case you hadn't noticed. What you see is what you get."

It made him uneasy to admit it, but she was right. Other than cleaning her guns, repairing things, and walking, he hadn't seen her do much of anything. He racked his brain, trying to think of some other activity.

"Cooking?"

She held her hand out.

"Look at this." She tapped a mark on her hand. "Can you tell what this is?"

"A scar."

"Well, yeah, but guess how I got it."

"Being stabbed?"

They stepped onto the wooden bridge that crossed the canyon. He averted his eyes from the floor of the valley below them, and she leaned in and touched his elbow.

"Chopping carrots."

That couldn't help but amuse him.

"How on earth did that happen?"

She threw her hands up.

"I don't know! You've seen me, I can handle a knife. But throw a vegetable into the mix, and it turns into chaos. I don't - "

The sound of wood cracking made his body react before he consciously knew what was going on. His hand flew to the back of Six's armor and he dragged her backwards until they both fell onto the ground. The crash of the broken plank smashing into the canyon floor below echoed upwards.

"Fuck."

"That was close." Six pushed her hair back, then blinked in surprise. They stared at each other for an instant before her mouth opened. "Hold up. No way. Did you - " She raised her hand to her mouth. "I actually just heard you swear. I can't believe it."

He was still breathing hard, but the rush of the adrenaline was starting to fade. He silently thanked God that they were still alive, and gave Him a small apology for swearing. The shock on Six's face gave way to an enormous smile.

"Oh no. This is my fault, isn't it? You spend too much time with me." She was laughing so hard she could hardly get the words out. "I'm a bad influence." She leaned to the side and laid her head across his lap. He barely even recoiled at the pain. "I'm driving you to sin."

He looked away and tried to keep a straight face as he idly twisted a strand of her hair around his finger.

"It's...not ideal. I shouldn't have done that. But it's not that consequential." She laughed again and leaned into his hand.

"It is! That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'm so honored that I got to witness that." She narrowed her eyes up at him with a conspiratorial air. "Didn't that feel a little bit good to just let loose and say it?”

He shook his head and decided to allow her whatever amusement it gave her.

"No. Now, don't you think we should find another way around?"

"Nah." She waved her hand. "This is nice. Five minute break, okay?"

That was fine with him. They stayed on the flat ground in front of the bridge, and he swept her hair back from her face. Judging by how relaxed her body felt against his, she seemed to be entirely content. It had to have been much longer than five minutes, but he wasn't going to tell her. As they watched the clouds pass overhead, she looked more at peace than he'd ever seen her.

 

They made it to the first camp well before sundown. A few of the tents were still standing, but it was dead silent. Six pulled the flap back to the main tent, her hand on her pistol. Aside from a table, a few bed rolls, and haphazardly stacked wooden crates, it looked bare. She leaned over the box and started rummaging through it.

"There's some stuff in here. Come take a look."

As if he was going to waste time picking through old supply kits while she was standing right there. Keeping his hands off of her while they were walking had already been such a challenge. He crossed to her side and reached around her hip to remove her pistol from its holster.

"Hey - "

He silenced her by pulling her close with his other hand. He set her gun on the top of the crate and put his own next to it.

"Weren't we supposed to be doing something?" Her voice tilted up, playful as she tugged the bandages off of his mouth. He unbuttoned her pants and shoved his hand in between her legs, and she let out a sharp exhale against him.

"Are you in a rush or something?" The lighthearted tone was still in her voice, but her chest was rising and falling faster. 

"I want you to get undressed and get on the table."

She stared at him, her hands frozen.

"Now."

She obeyed, fast, and her armor rustled as it hit the floor, followed by her clothes. He watched, taking in the stunning hard curves and soft lines of her body. The confident smoothness with which she tossed her shirt aside was near-breathtaking paired with the challenging sideways glance she gave him - a barely-cocked eyebrow and pushed-back shoulders, wordlessly daring him to come get her. The old table creaked as he helped her up onto it, and he took his time drinking in the sight of her leaning back, swinging a lofty heel against the edge of the table. She returned his blatantly shameless gaze, her eyes sweeping over him as he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside before advancing toward her. His hands wandered all over her skin, drawing a shiver out of her as he swept up the inside of her thigh. The trailing path stopped at her underwear, and he hooked his fingers and tugged them down her legs with a disapproving glance up at her.

"I didn't say to leave these on, did I?"

She stared at him, her eyes wide, and shook her head no. Moving slow, he sank to his knees and pushed his hands up her thighs. Her confusion was melting away, replaced with excitement as he kissed the inside of her knee and slowly worked his way up to her center. At last, he leaned forward and kissed the velvety skin on the crease of her thigh, breathing in her scent. He wanted nothing more than to delve into her right away, but he restrained himself. She would talk back and plead for it, and that would be worth the wait.

"Come on." She she squirmed and angled her hips toward him, and he pulled away until he wasn't touching her at all. "Asshole."

He raised his hand and grabbed her jaw, barely even affording her a glance as he gave it a brief shake.

"Keep talking like that. You'll wait even longer." 

His finger followed the curve of her folds, just barely grazing the skin, and he marveled at her sharp intake of breath. Every time she rose up against him, he moved backward.

"Jesus Christ."

He leaned forward and settled his mouth a fraction of an inch away from her, where he knew she could feel his breath on her skin. When she tilted her hips forward, he seized her and held her so firm that she was unable to move. 

"Oh my God," she complained.

"Are you going to exhaust the entire Godhead before I've even started?"

She scowled down at him.

"That's - fuck. That's such a weird thing to say." She leaned forward. "That shouldn't be hot. Why is everything hot when you say it?" A frustrated sigh escaped her. For a moment, he considered that.

"Hm. I can do better." He leaned forward and drew his tongue up along her silky skin, slow and steady, and he heard her breath catch in her throat once he brushed her clit. "You taste so good." She sighed with pleasure, and he ducked back down, increasing the pressure and drawing another quivering breath out of her. Her hand found the back of his head, guiding where she wanted his mouth, and he allowed her momentary seizure of control. There would be plenty of time to take it all back from her, bit by bit.

He slowly pushed a finger inside her, taking his time to watch her body yield around him, savoring her shivering response. She made a sweet breathy sound and opened her legs wider to him, and he rewarded her with pressing in a second finger, drawing a louder gasp out of her as she tightened her fingers on the edge of the table.

"Oh - that's so good. Please don't stop."

As soon as he had her in his grasp and leaned forward with a severe finality, her hips started rolling against his mouth, and he decided he was going to give her exactly what she asked for. 

 

He couldn't be certain, but it felt like well over half an hour had passed with his head between her legs, and she was such a delicious mess that he still had no intention of stopping anytime soon. He made her come once, then a second time, then a third, and he made up his mind to continue as long as she could stand it. At the beginning, she tried to stay quiet like she always did, but after drawing it out long enough, he was able to break her down. Her soft sighs turned to obscene moans, making his head spin as her heels dug into his back harder. Tears were starting to gather in her eyes, but he continued; sucking on her with unrelenting, vicious pressure that made a torrent of curses pour from her lips and her body clench tighter around his fingers over and over again. Finally, she jerked away from the stimulation and her hand flew to his shoulder to push him back.

"Oh my God, I don't think I can anymore." Her voice was ragged, nearly breathless, almost pleading with him to have mercy on her.

"You can. I know you can." He pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh, and bit down, provoking a gasp that was closer to a small shriek. He paused and looked up at her face. "Ask for it.”

"Keep going."

He leaned forward far enough that he knew she would be aching for him to make contact with her skin, but he didn't touch her.

"Keep going…?"

"Please."

He traced a slow circle with the barest amount of pressure, and she whimpered. Her hips moved up against his hand, betraying her neediness.

"Look at you. You're so desperate."

"Only for you."

The anticipation in his stomach tightened. He was so hard it was painful, but he forced himself to wait. Seeing her like this was electrifying - completely open to him, with tears clumping her dark eyelashes together while she shook too hard to control herself. She gave a low, frustrated groan and begged him again, like music to his ears.

"Come on, please, let's just fuck - "  

For trying to hurry him, he stood up and pushed her knees apart. She flinched back with surprise, but she spread her legs wider anyway. He put a hand on her throat, and she instantly bared it, satisfying him and whetting his appetite for more. He ran a thumb along her jugular vein. The pulse was fluttering hard and thrilling beneath her delicate skin, and he wanted to bite down and make her fall apart before they even really began. 

"I'm not finished." He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before he leaned forward, lowering his voice. "When I finally take you, you won't even be able to stand. That's what you want?”

She nodded, breathless, unsteady. He kissed the side of her face, and moved to her ear, his fingers still circling her clit. His hand threaded through her hair and gave it a sharp pull until he was forcing her to look up into his eyes, and she shuddered. "When I decide to bend you over this table and fuck you, you won't even be able to beg for it anymore.” Her eyes widened as soon as he said those words, and by the feeble arch of her back up against him, he knew she was close. Her whimper sounded painful, and her body trembled so hard it looked like her muscles were about to give out. 

He knelt down and continued his pace until he knew she would finally break down and fall apart. His free hand seized her hip and she cried out again. "I like watching you like this. You're going to keep coming for me until you can’t remember your own name."

Her body shook again, but it was different than usual. The minuscule vibrations continued for longer than he'd expect. He looked back up at her, and she'd clapped a hand over her mouth and screwed up her eyes. He froze. Tears rolled down her face, and he realized she was sobbing. He moved away from her and rested his hand on her knee. She put her face in her hands and doubled over, her shoulders still shaking.

It took him another heartbeat to see he was mistaken. She was actually laughing. Confusion swept over him as he leaned back, still watching her face.

"What's going on?" A sinking feeling gathered in his chest. A giggle escaped her mouth, puncturing the tension. He folded his hands in front of him and looked away from her, trying to sort through the mess of irritation and anger sparking up in him.

"Oh. No, no, no." She reached out and tried to put her hand on the side of his face, but he leaned away instinctively. Her hand fell away from her mouth, and even through her tears, he could see the concern in her eyes. "No, Joshua. Please. I promise. It's something else. It has nothing to do with you."

"What could it possibly be?" He sounded much angrier than he intended.

"I can't tell you right now. After - "

"Tell me."

"It's - um.” She sniffed. “I've actually been thinking about talking to you about it, but - not like this."

"Just say it." The resignation was setting in already. He had no idea what she had to say, but he knew it couldn't be good. 

"Can I at least put my pants back on?"

He glared at her, and she sighed.

"Fine. I can't believe I'm doing this right now." Her shoulders stiffened. "I'm so sorry for laughing. It's just funny to me because I actually can't remember my real name. It's stupid. Sorry. I couldn't help it."

He leaned forward, trying to process what she was saying.

"Excuse me?"

She rubbed her hands over her tear-streaked face and met his eyes again.

"This is so not the right time." She sighed. "Do you know what amnesia means?" 

It was such a bizarre question that all he could do was nod. 

"Okay. Well, that. I have that." Her hand moved up to the scar on her temple. "I'm fully aware how ridiculous this sounds, but it's true. There. I said it." Her hand gently lifted his chin up, and he stared into her eyes, stunned. The emotional whiplash bewildered him, and he was slow to piece together a coherent response. It almost seemed too impossible to be real.

"You're serious?"

She nodded.

"I'm so sorry. It wasn’t funny. I just couldn’t help it.” She groaned and put her head in her hands. "Ugh. I fucked this whole thing up so bad. This is not how I expected this conversation would begin."

His anger was fading fast, replaced with the sheer magnitude of trying to understand what she was telling him.

"How much of your memory is gone?" 

"Everything.” Her voice quivered unexpectedly, and she sniffed again. “Everything before I was shot, at least. I don't know where I'm from, or who my family is, or who I am, or anything. I have, like, less than a year of memories to work with." The pain in her eyes was sharp and real and he knew that no matter how unbelievable it seemed, it was the truth. 

"Six." Awareness rolled over him. That mimicry of a name was truly all she had. He looked down, overwhelmed into silence. The idea of not knowing his own mother or father was unfathomable. He thought about how easy it was for him to picture the room and the house he'd grown up with, and the happy times he'd shared with his family, and how readily he took those thoughts for granted.

Sometimes, it felt like he’d been so many different people in his life that his memories were the only thing that convinced him he was still the same man. _For better or for worse, they made me who I am._ If his memories dissolved into thin air, he had no idea who he would be.

"That's a tragedy. Perhaps the worst thing I've ever heard. I'm sorry you've had to endure that."

"Oh, come on." She seemed offended. "The worst? I wouldn't go that far. I mean - " she gestured at him. "No offense, but this whole situation you have going on is pretty bad."

"My memories of my family and my home are the most comforting things I carry with me. If I didn't have them, I would be lost."

"Okay, shit, don't rub it in." She pinched the bridge of her nose, and looked down at him. "So, is that too much drama for you? I haven't told anyone else that before. I thought it would scare most people off."

"Well, as you so courteously pointed out, I've had more than my share of trials. I understand." He ran his fingertips along the back of her hand.

"Yeah. I thought you might." She captured his hand in hers. "Honestly, now, I don't know why I put that off for so long. Finally saying it out loud feels sort of good." She looked down at her feet. "Sorry. I know I totally killed the mood. I was so into it, too." 

He ran his thumb along the side of her knee, and wondered why she couldn't see how little that mattered. Certainly, he was frustrated, but compared to the gravity of what she just shared with him, it was nothing.

"That's not important."

"I'm sorry. Can we go to bed? We can pick up where we left off tomorrow."

"Of course."

She stood up, and her legs wobbled so hard that she fell.

"Shit." She threw her arm out to catch herself against the table. It was an awkward fall, but even the way she caught her balance looked coordinated.

"That's the first time I've ever seen you trip. I didn’t know it was possible."

She pointed at him with a serious gleam in her eyes.

"And we're never going to speak of it again."' She snatched her underwear off the ground with a dignified air. "You're learning all my secrets today."

While she collected her clothes from the ground, he laid out their bed rolls and unpacked the heap of blankets Six had insisted on bringing. The last one he unfolded was the wool blanket that she liked to bring with her when they traveled overnight. Before now, he hadn't spent much time looking at the intricacy of the patterns, but he was so overwhelmed that he couldn't help but fixate on them. He still didn’t quite know how to handle this situation. When Six settled down on the bed roll next to him, he threw the blanket over her bare legs. He reached for his shirt, but she plucked it up faster and held it away from him.

"Give me my shirt back, please."

"Nope." She put her arms through the sleeves and began to button it up. "You don't need it. I bet you're not even cold." He sighed.

"You're not being clever. I can just go get another one from our bag."

"Then do it." She raised her eyebrows in a challenge, but he didn't move. "Exactly. We're already nice and comfortable. I’m here. You're not gonna get up."

"I'll concede."

She stretched her arms out and despite everything, he was overtaken with how beautiful she looked. The sight of his shirt draped over her was worth the discomfort he felt at having himself exposed without it. 

"You look better with it off, anyway." She yawned, and flashed him a smile that looked so earnest that he almost believed her.

"And it looks much better on you than me. I suppose we've found common ground."

She looked away, and he realized she was embarrassed. Even a tiny compliment like that seemed to have a much stronger impact on her than he would have expected. He promised himself he'd do it more often.

As they laid down and got comfortable, she settled up against his shoulder without a moment of hesitation. It hurt, but it felt like she was attempting to keep the pressure on his skin as light as possible. His mind was still reeling from everything she'd said to him. Suddenly, things were starting to fall into place, and so much of her that was previously confounding began to make sense. 

“Have you tried to find your home?” 

“There were no clues to go off. I had nothing on me but my work order and that rosary I showed you, and you said the rosary was nothing special. So, here I am. It’s all dead ends." 

_She's an exile too, in a strange way._

"Are you all right?" 

He wished he knew a better way to phrase his question, but by her quiet pause, she seemed to understand, like she was thinking it over.

"No. But I'm trying to move on. I have to keep living somehow, you know?”

"I do." He felt her curl up closer to his side and rest her ankle over his. To his delight, it was hardly painful at all. "You said you haven't told anyone else about your..." He tried to think of a way to phrase her condition politely. Fortunately for him, she picked up what he meant yet again.

“Complete shitshow of a life? Nope. You're the first. Congratulations." 

"Don't you have any friends?" 

"Yes," she huffed. "I do. I just..." She trailed off. "You’re sort of different, you know? I thought I’d never be ready to talk about it, but I think you already knew me way better than anyone else. Whether I like it or not.” Her voice started to sound drowsy. “Maybe we can talk about it more tomorrow?” 

Her words elated him. _She trusts me._ The thought struck him hard, quickly coupled with the weighty fear that he would let her down. He held her tight, ignoring the burn in his skin, and realized that when they met, he was full of rage and grief, but he had few true fears. There hadn’t been much left for him to lose. Now, it felt like his fears were doing nothing but multiplying with each passing day. He tried to think of some other question to change the subject and distract them both.  

"How often do you speak Spanish these days?" 

"Mm." He felt the vibrations from her voice. "Enough. Not here, of course. But back in the Mojave, I switch back and forth. Whatever's easier for other people." She put her arm over his stomach. "Is this language talk getting you hot and bothered, or something?"

"No." He attempted to restrain the exasperation in his voice. "I simply think it's interesting."

"I know you do." She pressed a light kiss to his neck. "It's kind of dorky. I love it."

Everything felt like it had gone still. At once, he was hyper-aware of all the sounds that he hadn't noticed before. The croaking of the lizards and the rushing of the stream outside seemed so loud that he could hardly think straight.

"You don't mean that." The words broke out of his mouth, finally.

"That you're a dork? Yeah, I really do. Trust me. Maybe no one else knows, but I do."

His throat felt dry, until he finally remembered what he'd meant to say.

"Perhaps if you could find a linguist who specializes in Spanish, it might help you locate where you came from."

She gave a low laugh and pushed her head further against him.

"I think I already ran into the only linguist left in the entire wasteland. It's not exactly a common skill."

It took him a second to realize that she was referring to him. It was technically true, but he hadn't thought of himself that way in a long time.

"I don't know enough about Spanish to be of use. But if you could find someone who did, then why not try?"

"Eh. I don’t know. That sounds like a one-in-a-million shot."

"That's never stopped you before."

She sighed and rolled over.

"The way I talk is pretty average. Everyone I've met can understand me just fine."

 _She's trying to find reasons why this won't work._ It was the exact opposite of how she usually behaved, even in the face of the most daunting odds. 

"Of course. To you, your speech seems non-distinct. Everyone thinks that about their own way of speaking. Linguistic variation is inherently tied to geography. Someone with enough knowledge can pick out features of your vocabulary or pronunciation that you might not be aware of."

"Mmhm. Very interesting. I'm going to sleep now."

"Just try, Six. The Lord has worked more miracles than we can count."

She didn't respond. He knew by the sound of her breathing that she wasn't actually asleep yet, but for some reason, she wanted him to think she was.

"Goodnight, Six."


	33. XXXIII

"Wake up, Marisol."

She grumbled and pulled the blanket over her face.

"I swear, mija. You could sleep through anything."

A hand gently shook her shoulder. Finally, she opened her eyes and pushed herself to a sitting position. The moonlight streaming through the window illuminated her father in shadowy blues. 

"There's a coyote in the flock." He lifted his finger to his mouth. "The boys are still sleeping."

They left the house without making a sound. The third step on the wooden staircase always creaked on one side, so she made sure to avoid it. Underneath the full moon, they trudged along the path to the pastures out back. The carbine bounced at her father's side, uneven with the shuffling step he did on one leg. Every time he brought the gun out, she was unable to tear her eyes away. It was old, but her father often spent his evenings in the living room polishing the dark wood until it could reflect the firelight.

He crouched down behind the fence and pointed out at the mountains. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then she saw it: a blurred shadow snaking down the hill towards their sheep, moving with the lithe anticipation of a predator.

"That's a wolf. Too big to be a coyote." With slow, deliberate movements, he held the rifle out to her and nodded. "I want you to try it. I think you're ready." His voice was so low that he was practically mouthing the words.

She closed her hands around the gun. It was almost too heavy for her arms, still reedy and childlike with youth, but she tugged it up higher anyway. With steady and practiced movements, she lifted it to her cheek and aimed down the sights like he had shown her countless times. This part was as easy as breathing, but she still felt a twinge of anxiety. This was the first time she'd ever shot at anything alive.

"Breathe." He put his hand on her back. "You don't have to rush. Just wait. Plan for where he will be. Think about what you would do if you were him."

The wolf was going to try to circle around wide and catch one of the smaller sheep by surprise. She adjusted her aim and pulled the trigger. The boom of the gun next to her ear was so loud that it obliterated everything else. For a split second, only the sound of the gunshot reverberated in her brain. 

The ringing in her ears passed. The sheep were bleating at the disturbance, but the wolf was on the ground. She handed him the gun, and a small smile played at the side of his mouth.

"You know, I was your age when my father taught me to shoot." He took out one of the hand-rolled cigarettes he always tucked away in his shirt pocket. "Your mother asks me why you need to learn these kinds of things, if our town is so safe. And it is. But someone's got to keep it that way, eh?" He lit the cigarette and looked over the land in front of them. "There are wolves all around us, and someday, I won't be around anymore. It'll be up to you."

"I know."

Up to that point, she had never once seen her father cry, but in the moonlight, his eyes looked watery. He put his hand on her shoulder. She was confused at the sudden wave of emotion that seemed to sweep over him.

"I want you to know that I'm proud of you. I always will be, no matter what. I never thought I - " His voice was quieter than usual as he flicked the ash off of the end of his cigarette. "The day you were born was the happiest day of my life."

She chewed the side of her thumb.

"I know, dad. You've told me."

"Ah, listen to me going on like a sentimental old man." He patted the top of her head. "It doesn't seem important to you now, but remember it. I love you. I'm with you always in my heart. Wherever you go, the same sky covers us all." He pointed up at the boundless spread of stars about them, and for a moment, she stared up, watching the smoke from his cigarette drift in the wind. At once, a strange feeling overcame her, like the world seemed wider than it once had.

 

 

“Pinch your nose, Marisol.”

She felt her entire face throb as she leaned back in the chair. Lucas ran a wet washcloth over her face and cocked an eyebrow in that smug way he had of making everything a joke, equal parts endearing and infuriating.

“Damn. You’re gonna be even uglier now.”

She reached out to smack him and winced in pain as he successfully dodged out of the way. This was the first time she’d ever been punched, and it hurt so much worse than she expected. Every time she tried to breathe, the fire seared down her nose. At least she landed one good hit on the other guy, even though her hand was aching. 

“No. Lean forward.” Ramón put a hand on her shoulder and helped her. She leaned her elbows on her knees and spat more blood on the floor.

“Gross.” Both of her brothers spoke and made identical faces of disgust at the same time. 

“I don’t want to hear it.” She raised a finger. “Just clean this shit up before mom - “

“Before mom what?”

The door creaked, and to their collective horror, their mother stood in front of them with her arms crossed. All three of them were probably giving her the same wide-eyed stare of guilt. Their mother’s eyes traveled over them, and although she said nothing, they all instantly knew they were in trouble. The twins put their hands on Marisol’s shoulders at the same time.

“Well?”

“I got into a fight.” Marisol wiped her nose, and saw more red blood on the side of her hand. Gently, she pushed the boys behind her and sat up straighter.

“A fight? What happened?” Her mother’s eyebrows furrowed, and she heard the thunder gathering behind her voice.

“We were playing baseball - “

“And some of the other kids - “

“They were messing with us.” Marisol’s calm voice cut through their frantic explanations.

“I don’t want to hear any excuses.” Their mother folded her arms. “Marisol, I can’t believe you. You are in so much trouble." Her voice shook with anger. "Forget about going anywhere for a while. No football. No baseball. No nothing. You just wait until your father gets home.” She rubbed her temples and turned away, invoking God to help her.

“But - “

“No more.” She cut the air with her hand. “Boys, go to your room.”

Ramón and Lucas cast the same anxious glance over their shoulders as they shuffled out of the kitchen. Marisol hardly ever got in trouble, especially compared to the twins, but whenever she did, her mother came down on her like a ton of bricks. It wasn't fair in the slightest, and she crossed her arms at the injustice of it all. 

“What’s wrong with you, Marisol? Are you trying to set a bad example?”

“I - “

“Don’t talk back.”

“But - “

“I’m warning you.”

“They were getting picked on.” She rubbed the back of her hand and grimaced again. “I had to stop them. Those other boys were way older.”

Her mom paused. For a moment, it was so quiet that she only heard the sound of her own breathing. Her mother crossed the room and closed the door.

“Let me see your hand.”

Marisol held her hand out, and her mother examined the scrapes on her knuckles, her eyebrows drawn in concern. When she looked back up, it was maybe the one and only time in her life she ever saw anything that could be described as mischievous cross her mother’s face.

"Did you win?"

"No. I got my a - " The return of the death glare made her halt before she finished that sentence. "I lost. Bad." 

Her mother's gaze softened. On the occasions when she looked at her that way, Marisol always thought her eyes looked warmer and deeper than any color she'd ever seen. 

"You're a good big sister. Your brothers are so blessed to have you.” She reached down and brushed Marisol’s hair back over her shoulder with a long sigh. “But this better not happen again, you understand me? You have a responsibility to this family. You don't need to start going off and getting into trouble.”

“Yes, mom.”

“Go wash yourself up and come set the table for dinner.”

Marisol suppressed a groan and lurched to the washroom, and couldn't help but think that all in all, it could have gone much worse. 

 

 

Long after they finished eating, she climbed into bed and her father drew up the chair next to her like he usually did.

"Goodnight." Her mother dropped the wooden rosary into her outstretched hand and gave her an enormous kiss on the cheek, and she tried not to pull away. "Help her say her prayers, all right? I'm going to go check on the boys."

He nodded solemnly and lifted the bible up in his hands. After her mother rounded the corner and left the room, he cocked his head.

"Is she gone?"

Marisol nodded, and her father tossed the leather-bound book on the table.

"Forget about all that. You don't need it." He leaned forward. "I have a good story for you tonight. It involves the worst gang to ever pass through Nogales, a brahmin cart, and a board with nails in it. Listen up. This is a valuable lesson."

She smiled and flipped the wooden cross back and forth in her hands. Ever since she was little, her father would entertain her with stories about his gunslinger days, waving his hands to emphasize his words but keeping his voice low to prevent her mom from hearing. She couldn't remember the last time they'd actually gotten through a prayer.

His stories were always fascinating. It seemed like her father had been pretty much everywhere, and his descriptions of the places and the people he'd met were captivating. It was so easy to picture them all in her head. That night, he talked longer than usual. Finally, he yawned into the back of his hand.

"That's all I have for tonight." He leaned over and collected the bible from the table. 

"Dad? Why did you stop doing all that stuff? How did you end up here?"

Most of their neighbors had lived in the town their entire lives, but her parents were an exception. Her dad was from somewhere close, but she wondered about her mom. Marisol knew she was from somewhere far away, down further south, but her mom was always vague on the rare occasions she talked about it.

He paused, and his hand found his knee.

"I got hurt." He looked down. "But it was for the best. I couldn't live that way forever. Marrying your mother and settling down was the right thing to do."

She couldn't really understand what he was saying. Milagros was a nice village, but every day here passed the same way. Every morning, she woke up and fed the animals, and kicked a soccer ball around, and talked to their neighbors, and then went to sleep and did it all over again. There was nothing wrong with that, but the stories he told her seemed so much more exciting.

"Marisol," he sighed, "I tell you about the interesting parts of that life, but there were awful parts, too. More of those, really. Going from one place to another, never knowing if tomorrow is the day someone shoots you - it's no life at all. It can only last so long."

For a moment, she considered that. What he was saying was true, but there was still some longing feeling that she couldn't shake.

"When I get older, I want to do what you did." She leaned back and drew the covers over herself. He studied her for a moment.

"I think you're capable of anything you set your mind to. I shouldn't encourage you, but it's the truth." He looked at the oil lamp flickering between them. "Out there, I saw the evil things people are capable of doing to each other. I'll never be able to forget them. But I experienced beautiful things, too. There's a kind of freedom in taking care of yourself. Everything in life is a trade. You gain some things, and lose others." The sunbeaten skin around his mouth creased in a smile. "I think you'll be able to go wherever your feet take you, as long as you always come back home and visit your poor father." He stood up, clutching on to the back of the chair for support. "Goodnight. Sweet dreams. Tomorrow, let's take a look at your wrist, and later I'll show you how to hit someone the right way, okay? We can't have you breaking your hand."

That night, she dreamed of roads that wound through endless stretches of desert; empty, but free, and red canyons that soared up to the sky with a harsh and terrifying beauty. As long as she could remember, she'd always had vivid dreams, and in those days, they were almost always good ones. 

 

 

As soon as Marisol swung open the door to the old wooden building, washed in a coat of eternally peeling turquoise, the bartender waved. Her eyes fell on a stranger hunched over in front of him. His sunburnt neck and worn clothes told her he was from out of town. That had to be the man she was looking for.

She'd just returned from a long job, and the deluge of neighbors who ran out of their houses and waved from their porches was familiar by now. They said hello and kissed her cheek; remarked how she was the spitting image of her mother now, but must've got that curly hair from her dad. A young man handed her a pot his mother had borrowed from hers, and an old woman kissed her cheek and told her how proud they all were of her for doing so well out there in the rest of the world.

Amidst the typical warm welcome, there was something unusual - one of her father's friends mentioned a visitor in the saloon that wanted to talk to her. She was still dusty and dead-tired from walking, but she had to go find out who could have been calling on her all the way out here. Their town was isolated halfway up the mountains, and visitors rarely ever stumbled this far off the main roads.

She took her hat off and approached the bar.

"Good afternoon." She leaned on the shiny wooden counter top. "I heard someone wanted to talk to me."

"You gotta be shitting me." The man spoke in English, and his watery blue eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down. He leaned toward the bartender. "No way. I thought you said you had a courier for me." The pink leathery skin of his cheeks crinkled up in disdain.

"I am a courier."

"You understand me?"

She crossed her arms and nodded.

"Fine. I'll ask you in English, then: where are your parents?"

"I'm grown." She shifted the carbine higher on her shoulder and tried not to seem too irritated. Much to her chagrin, she was still sort of baby-faced, and any mention of it instantly put her on the defensive. "And like I said, I'm a courier."

"You look like a farmer." 

She buttoned her lip in annoyance. 

"Yeah. That too. We're shepherds, actually, but what's it to you?"

The man shook his head and lifted his drink.

"Listen, kid, no offense, but I don't think you're the one for this job. I work for a courier service, and I'm passing through to take care of some business in Chihuahua."

"No one just passes through here," Marisol scoffed. "This is a dead end."

The man blinked at her.

"Fine. I got a little lost. Happens to the best of us every once in a while. Been doing mostly desk work lately - " He waved his hand. "Anyway, this gentleman here and I got to talking and he told me y'all had a local who works courier jobs, and out of curiosity, I asked to see you and…" he arched an eyebrow with distaste. "Here you are, I guess. They said you were a good kid. That figures. Maybe things are easy around here in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere, but they ain't up north. I'm not going to be responsible for sending you to your almost certain death."

She tapped her knuckles on the counter and leaned forward.

"My route is plenty dangerous. I've been doing this for four years. I know every pitfall and road block in this entire area. Try me."

His jaw worked for a second, then he licked his cracked lips and turned to her.

"What's south of the junction of highway fourteen and seventeen?"

She spread her arms wide.

"A really big deathclaw nest."

"Between here and Hermosillo?"

"Bandits running a kidnapping scheme."

"And what will you find if you take the twenty east and hang a right toward Las Tierras?"

"A ghoul colony. Nice folks, actually."

He let out a long sigh.

"You been doing this work for four years?"

"Yeah. And I'm not dead yet."

With a flat look in his eyes, he shot the rest of his whiskey back and slammed the glass on the bar.

"I hope I'm not going to regret this." He leaned toward the bartender and beckoned to him. "One for me and one for this courier here." The bartender poured them tall shots that slopped over the glass rims while the man leaned back toward her.

"All right, kid, here's the deal. Shit's fucked north of the border. Big time. I'm sure you're making nice enough pocket money running this route. But there's recently been, uh." He fiddled with his glass. "A few openings with the courier service I work for."

"Okay."

He held up his hand.

"Don't say okay until you hear the details. The details being - you ever heard of Caesar's Legion?"

Some of the other couriers had told her stories, but she wasn't sure how much was truth and how much was embellishment. The things she'd heard seemed too unbelievable to be true, and it was so far away that there wasn't any way to be certain.

"Yeah, but I don't know anything about them."

"Good for you. They've been causing a hell of a mess. Rumor is, they're gearing up a campaign to attack the Hoover Dam, and conquer the city of New Vegas with it."

She tried to piece together what all of this had to do with her, but she stayed silent and waited for him to continue.

"You can bet the NCR won't take it lying down, though, and looks like there's gonna be fighting. Nasty stuff, on a bigger scale than anyone's ever seen 'round here. As of right now, the Mojave is one big quagmire."

"A quag-what?"

"Sorry. A mess. A clusterfuck." He waved his hand. "The roads are in shambles. Everyone's confused - no one knows what's gonna happen. Lots of complicated factors here." He leaned his head on his hand. "I'm gonna be honest with you, because if you can't handle this, I'd rather know now than when someone steals one of our packages off of your corpse. A bunch of our couriers just quit and went back home - west or east or wherever they came from. Don't blame 'em, everything's about to go to hell in a handbasket, but the mail still needs delivering, you know? So the Mojave Express is looking for a few replacements - tough ones."

She thought for a moment.

"I'd have to go north?"

"Yep. You sign up for as many jobs as you want. We don't care. We just need bodies who can handle their own. If I were you, I'd stay close to the border and do the smaller regional jobs. You don't wanna mess around near Vegas. Those are the shittiest assignments these days."

"And the pay?"

"Better than you'll get here, 'cause the job is rougher. But you courier types always say it's about the money." He took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. "It never really is."

Her mother would cry and beg her not to go. Her father would shake his head and stay silent, knowing that there was no way to convince her. The remorse she felt was tempered with by the tiny spark that flared up in her chest, strong enough to overpower everything else.

That feeling was impossible to understand, but she decided she wanted to follow it as far as it would take her. There was nothing wrong with this village where she'd spent the first two decades of her life, but there was nothing more to do, either. It still felt like there was some missing piece of herself that she should have found long ago, but never quite did. Working up north would be dangerous and grueling, but above all else, it would be something new to seize. It was a forward move.

Her heart started beating faster, and she suddenly understood what she was feeling. It was hunger. 

"I'm interested."

"Here." He slid her a business card. "I'll be posted up here for the next few days. Think about it. If you want the job, come talk to me. We'll get you set up and send you north. Salud." They lifted their glasses and clinked them, then she tossed the whiskey back. It burned, but she tried to sniff back the water in her eyes.

"I have a feeling I'll be hearing from you soon..." he trailed off with a questioning upswing in his voice.

"Marisol."

"Marisol. Okay." He gave her a peculiar side glance. "You sure you wanna do this? No shame in backing out."

She fiddled with the card in her hand until it began to wrinkle. She thought about her parents and her brothers and all of their neighbors, and decided that no matter what, she'd make it back home in time for Christmas. A few months up north would pass by in a flash, and then she could come back here for a few more. She could do both. Home would always be here. Her parents wouldn't be happy, but they would have to accept that. She didn't know what would fill the empty spaces in her mind, but whatever it was, she wouldn't find it here. 

"Yes." She said. "I'm sure. This is what I want."  

He gave her an incredulous look.

"All right. If you still feel that way in two days, meet me back here at noon." 

She put her hat back on, barely able to control the anticipation devouring her chest. She could have hugged this stranger in front of her, but she settled for a nod and tried to hide the smile gathering at the corner of her mouth.

"I will." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next update probably won't be until friday/saturday because I'm traveling a little :^)


	34. XXXIV

"I'll do the honors." Six held the match against the rock, then paused. "Do you have anything you'd like to say?"

The crease between Joshua's eyebrows told her he definitely did not think she was being funny. She nudged him with her shoulder.

"Come on, no last respects?"

"Get it over with."

"Okay." She cleared her throat. "Goodbye, old White Legs camp. Uh, sorry you had such shitty people living in you. Thanks for keeping the snow off of us last night. I'll always have fond memories of getting head here. Rest in peace."

It wasn't necessary to look at Joshua to know what he thought of that. His heavy sigh gave her enough information.

Six lit the match and threw it. They watched the flame catch and lick up the pile of tents and crates they'd gathered. After scavenging what few supplies were left, they puzzled over what to do with the remaining things in the camp. It was too far away to be of any use to the Dead Horses, so they decided to burn it down so no one else could use it. She offered to take care of it herself while he packed up, but he stayed with her.

"Let's go." Joshua put his hand on her elbow.

She was still horrified about what happened between them yesterday, but he reassured her so firmly that she almost accepted that it was no big deal. 

However, he was acting a little strange. That morning while they were making breakfast, he hardly moved his hand off of her knee. A few times, she caught him staring at her with an evaluating gaze, like he was trying to pick her apart all over again. He hadn't done that in a while. After they started walking to the next camp, he cast her a sideways glance of curiosity, and she braced herself for whatever he was about to ask her.

"Are you aware of any previous parts of your life at all, even if you don't know the specific facts? Emotions, perhaps?" The scrutinizing look was back, but she decided she'd let him play psychoanalyst if that's what he really wanted to do with their time.

"No. Like I said, it's just nothing. It's the exact goddamn opposite of something, actually." She regretted being sharp with him, but he didn't seem to notice. He just nodded in thought. 

"It's a void." 

"I guess." She kicked a large rock in front of her too hard, and it went flying several feet ahead.

"Have you considered returning to the last place you remember and seeing if it sparks any memories?"

Aside from walking into the Fort with a huge bow on her head and announcing to the guards that she wanted to see Caesar, going back to the Goodsprings cemetery was pretty much the last thing on earth she wanted to do. She knew Joshua was trying to help, but his suggestions were starting to bother her.

"There's really not much there. I talked to everyone I could, and none of them were much help. Besides, just look around at how fucked up the world is right now. I probably don't even have anything to go back to. There's a good chance my family's long gone." Getting her hopes up would be a huge mistake.  _It's pointless,_ she told herself.

"You know," she added, "they were probably jerks, anyway."

"But - "

"Can we talk about something else? Please?" She flashed him a look that she hoped would make him drop the subject. Apparently it worked, because he didn't say anything else about it for the rest of the day.

Their conversation stayed light enough. Since they had a few hours, Six took the opportunity to pick his brain for a while about the usual suspects. Today, it was the NCR. Joshua's opinion on that topic: not great. 

"They claim otherwise, but they're wicked all the same. They care too much for earthly power and have no concern for God's laws."

She was following it all well enough until he started rattling off a bunch of names that she didn't recognize. From all of the learning and she'd done since waking up, she was pretty well versed in the history of the Mojave, but some things still eluded her.

"President who?" She hoisted her rifle higher on her shoulder, and he looked up at her, startled. 

"President Tandi. She used to lead the NCR. How do you not - " He broke off with a shake of his head.

"What?"

"You're too young to remember." He looked away with a thousand-yard stare of regret plastered on his face.

"That's not it." She crossed her arms. "I'm just not from around here. Probably." She caught up to him with a few quick steps. "It doesn't matter."

He didn't respond, but his eyes stayed fixed ahead of them, as if he was thinking that it actually did matter quite a bit. It struck Six as a weird thing for him to get hung up on, like maybe he was displacing some other discomfort onto the age gap between them, but she wasn't going to pick at that theory too hard. 

"Hey." She tapped him on the elbow. "Is this gonna be a problem for you? Because it's something I can't change. It won't go away."

After a few seconds of deliberation, he looked back down at her.

"No."

"Then don't worry about it anymore."

They resumed walking in silence. It struck her that even in this indirect way, it was the first time they'd verbally acknowledged whatever was going on between them in the daylight.

"So, you're happy with this?"

The sound of his voice brought her back to the present.

"With what?"

"That we're..." He trailed off, like he was searching for the right thing to say.

"You and me?" She looked up at him, and he nodded. "I mean, yeah. Of course. We're just..." She waved her hands, trying to figure out how to phrase it delicately, without sounding too serious.

"Friends." He nodded. "I know."

"Fucking."

They both stopped walking as soon as they spoke over each other. In a split second, her heart dropped, and his entire demeanor changed. He looked about as upset as she felt. 

"Just friends. Okay. Fine. We must be pretty good friends, then." She flung the word back at him, surprised at how much it hurt her. She refused to be sad about this in front of him, but she could be angry. For his part, the look in his eyes could have turned a man to stone.

"I see. I was presumptuous. It won't happen again." The edge of bitterness in his voice made her even more indignant.

"Joshua." She clapped her hands together. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about. What does that word even mean?"

"Presumptuous?" As mad as he was, he still used his explaining-voice. "Overstepping my bounds. Assuming."

"Assuming what?" 

"That this was something more than it actually is."

"Well fine," she spat. "I guess I did, too."

He blinked at her, and the wave of anger between them ebbed.

"That doesn't make any sense, Six." He sounded confused. She mentally untangled their conflicting lines of reasoning, and realized that they were basically getting mad at each other about the same thing. _He likes me, too._ That thought made her nearly giddy, until she realized they still had to sort their word problem out.

"Okay, you're right. It doesn't." She rubbed the back of her neck. "Look, I think we're on the same page. We don't have to call it anything. It is what it is."

For a moment, neither one of them seemed sure how to react, so they resumed walking.

"But, this - " he gestured at his chest, then hers. "It's all right?"

"Yeah. I think so. I'm happy." She shot him a sideways glance. "Are you?"

"Yes." His answer was swift. They were both looking at each other now, and she tried to think of a response. It felt important, like this was something she could easily screw up if she wasn't careful.  _Neat?_ No, that would annoy him. Too casual. _I'm glad?_ A little too stiff. She sifted through her options, and none of them seemed like the right thing to say. When he turned away and looked back at the footpath, she saw her opportunity. Before he could react, she stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. She'd never done anything like that before, but in a way that made her sort of nervous, it felt right.

Joshua stopped in his tracks. Her heart thumped in her chest. _I shouldn't have done that._  Maybe it was too affectionate. To her surprise, when he met her eyes again, he looked stunned. His hand found her waist, and he pulled them closer together. It was firm, but unhurried - completely unlike the demanding way he usually did it.

"All right." His voice was soft. "I think we have an agreement."

The way he was staring at her was unexpected; unlike anything she had ever seen before, like she was the most cherished thing in the entire world. It made her throat feel tight. After months of concealing her feelings and calculating her moves toward him, it seemed like he just dropped his own front entirely. With a single glance, he laid all his cards face-up on the table. For a moment, the rest of the world was tiny and insignificant compared to this. She stuck her hands under his coat and encircled him with her arms like she was never going to let go.  

His hand found the side of her face, and she felt herself beaming up at him, completely unrestrained. Her eyes drifted down to his mouth underneath the fabric.

"Can I - "

He cut her off by pulling the bandages down and tilting his head down. As soon as their lips met, she let herself lean all the way into his body and just give in to the feeling of his mouth, rough against hers, and his fingers soothing through her hair. 

Something cold and wet struck the top of her head, and she tilted her head up. Gray clouds had gathered over them, and a few raindrops struck her in rapid succession. She tried to pull away, but he kept planting kisses on the side of her face.

"Joshua. Look." She laughed into his shoulder and tried to twist out of his grasp. He tilted her chin up and she was hit with a rush of things she wanted to say to him, so she just kissed him again and tightened her arms around him, as if she could physically show him how warm he made her feel. Her heart crashed against her chest as he slid his hand down the side of her neck and kissed her deeper. When they pulled back, she just pointed up at the sky until she caught her breath. 

"It's raining." 

"I don't care." He murmured against her mouth. His gaze was so earnest that she almost couldn't handle being on the receiving end of it.

The cold water dripping down the side of her face brought her back to reality. The rain was getting heavier, and it had to be uncomfortable for him. She reluctantly stepped back and took his hand, and they both stared at the wet bandages on his palm before she offered him a placating smile.

"I don't want to stand in the rain, anyway. Let's get inside."

 

 

That morning, Six woke up first, so she sat up and listened to the birds chirping for a while. When she felt Joshua stir next to her, she briefly panicked over how she should act. They hadn't done this yet. Up to this point, whichever one of them woke up first got up and started getting ready before the other one was awake.

"Hi." She waved, then dropped her hand back in her lap. He rubbed his eyes with one hand, then stared at her. She ran her hand through her hair and wondered if he was weirded out by her still being in bed with him. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and began to get up.

"Do you have somewhere to be?"

He held his hand out to her, and she took it and laid back down next to him on the bed roll. The uncharacteristic slowness of his movements made her smile.

"You're tired." 

"You're perfect." He said it like it couldn't have been more straightforward, as if he was observing that the sky was blue.

“No, I’m not," she laughed. 

“You are.”

The blanket slipped down her arm, and he drew it over her shoulders again.

“What did we do last night?” She felt herself frowning. She vaguely remembered getting inside the tent, but that was it.

“Very little. I had to change my bandages and you assured me that despite lying down with your eyes closed, you were not actually going to sleep.” He paused like he was thinking. “I believe your phrasing was that you were just resting your eyes.”

“Wow. I can’t believe you fell for that.” She found his hand and kissed the back of it, but she felt him stiffen.

"You don't remember?"

"I mean, now that you mention it, yeah." He gave her a peculiar look, and she shrugged. "It happens. My memory isn't the best. I guess I was tired."

She really didn't care for the worry written across his face, so she leaned forward to kiss him and get rid of it. The feeling of rough fabric on her lips made her pull back.

"Sorry." She ran her thumb along the edge of the bandage. 

"That's all right." Her hair fell in his face, and she brushed it over her back with a huff of irritation. His eyes crinkled up with a smile.

"Ah, I need a haircut. That's the first thing I'm doing once I get back home." She looked back down at him. "So, what time do we need to be out of here?"

For a second, it seemed like the light had left his eyes. She was concerned she had done something to upset him, but whatever it was passed.

"It doesn't matter."

"Aren't we supposed to head back soon?"

His hand found the side of her face, and he ran his thumb along her chin.

"I said it's not important, didn't I?"

She propped her head up on her hand. "If you say so. I guess we'll take a break."

"I suppose the world will keep turning without us for one day."

As far as she knew, it did. They lay in bed for a while, kissing and mumbling to each other and kissing more until they forgot what they had been talking about in the first place. It was strangely thrilling to waste time doing nothing but enjoying each other's company. She let her hands roam over his body while they talked, gentle and subdued, splayed out over the muscle of his stomach as she rested her head against him.

"La mano. That's your word for today." She shifted to her stomach and trailed her fingers up the back of his hand.

"It comes from Latin. Manus. Similar enough."

His hand found the small of her back underneath her shirt, and he rubbed circles on her skin until she dropped her head on his chest. She kept her muscles tense to avoid putting any weight on him until he drew her closer, and she finally relaxed against him.

"I believe I owe you a phrase now, since you've taught me so many."

"Okay. Shoot."

"Meum verculum."

"What does it mean?"

"Literally, 'my springtime' in a diminutive form. It's a way of showing endearment."

"Ah. Yeah. Diminutivos. We have those too." She thought about what he'd said. "But that's pretty."

He stared at the ceiling.

"It reminds me of you."

She pulled the blanket over her face, and God help her sorry ass, but it felt like pressure was building in her head and her eyes were beginning to prickle.

“You don't like it?”

“Sorry.” She pulled the blanket back and pressed her hands into her eyes. “Yeah, I do. I like it a lot." 

Six didn’t know what had gotten into her lately. Three months ago, she never would have acted so open and soft in front of someone else. It felt like all the work she’d put into constructing herself was cracking, and all of these feelings that were supposed to belong to someone else were bubbling up to the surface from wherever they’d been buried.

It really was a lovely and moving phrase, especially said while they were entombed in the dead of winter, especially when he was the one saying it. However, the more she thought about it, a strange nagging feeling began to plague her. It made her head spin that he could say such a sweet thing in a language that she'd come to automatically fear the sound of.  _But that's who he is._  The force and conviction behind the beautiful words had a lot in common with that of the terrifying ones.

After a few minutes, she still couldn't get the uneasy feeling in her stomach to go away. She supposed that meant her questions wouldn't, either. 

"So, the whole Latin thing. What's up with that?"

For once, she thought he was going to ignore her, but eventually, he looked down and rubbed the back of his hand.

"A shared language unifies people. It's a means of power. When mankind became too arrogant, the Lord saw it fit to confound the languages of the people on earth, but...some men think themselves gods."

"You were trained specifically to know a bunch of different dialects, though?" He sat up higher, and she stopped talking.

"Yes, I was. At first, that’s why I was useful. Later on, it became forbidden for soldiers to speak their native tongues after joining the Legion." He lowered his voice. “It’s about control.”

She sat up and crossed her legs and thought about how he worded that sentence. _It became forbidden._  It was awkward, clunky - not how he usually spoke at all. 

"So, was that your idea? In the beginning?"

The silence between them was strained.

"Caesar decided to implement it, of course. But - " His jaw tightened. "It was so long ago. It's hard to remember which of us suggested it."

In a terrible way, she could admire how effective of a move it was. Six knew he'd done much more physically brutal things than that, but for some reason, this was particularly hard to hear. The idea of all of those people losing their languages and their identities filled her with a nebulous kind of sadness, and that she could so starkly see Joshua's hand in that loss made her uncomfortable. _But he was there from the start. He and Caesar built it all together._  

"So were you and Caesar close?"

"I knew him for thirty years.'"

By now, she recognized that as a typical Joshua way of avoiding a question that he didn't want to answer - what he said was technically true, but not what she was really talking about.

"Yeah, but I mean, after that long, I guess you knew him pretty well, right? Did you get along?"

He hesitated.

"You could say that."

Thirty years. She couldn't even fathom being around someone for that long, let alone someone as awful as Caesar. The way Joshua talked about him always piqued her interest - like he was just a normal person, and not the monster she always pictured him as. Joshua was so closed off from everyone around him that the idea of them being friendly or even doing mundane shit together was disorienting. And, if they got along personally, it made what Caesar did to him seem even more cruel. Despite that, it still didn't surprise her. Back then, it probably didn't surprise Joshua, either. He had to have seen it coming. Terrible people tended to do terrible things. Create a cutthroat world, and it's only a matter of time before your throat gets cut. 

"So, in your opinion, do you think he’s capable of feeling remorse? Like, what he did to you, for example. Do you think he feels sorry?"

His eyes were suddenly hard and calculating, like he was trying to figure out what exactly she wanted from him.

"I don't concern myself with those questions. I rarely think about him at all."

She knew this was a sore spot, but his reaction made her decide to quit pushing. 

"Okay. We'll talk about something else." She fiddled with the edge of her blanket and thought about how people in the wasteland talked about Joshua - always whispered, always calling him the Burned Man and never his real name for fear that Caesar would have them killed _. The words matter._  Maybe Caesar had learned a few tricks from Joshua along the way.

The soft patter of the rain began on the canvas tent above them. She closed her eyes and listened to the gentle roar. It was one of her favorite sounds, and she rarely ever heard it these days.

 _It’s raining. It's not snowing anymore._ Her eyes flew open. _I'm running out of time._ That simple realization felt like plunging into ice water. She disentangled herself from the blankets and sat up all the way. 

The chip was tucked in her bag, and she could practically feel its presence across the room - calling her name, reminding her that her work wasn't over yet. Six never felt the tug of destiny, or of some kind of fate interweaving through her life. The result of these random accidents that created her life was something much more simple - a call she'd chosen to answer. The platinum chip was a job she'd chosen to take, and it was still in her hands. The burden she carried was a heavy one, but she was going to follow this path to the end, no matter what. 

"Are you all right?" 

Six stared at the wall of the tent.

"Yeah. Of course I am." She laid on her back and folded her hands over her stomach. "So, what do you say we pack our shit up and run away to Mexico?" His head turned toward her, and his eyes traveled over her face like he was searching it for some kind of answer. He was acting as if she'd just reached out and shaken him. "I've heard about oceans, but I've never seen them before. I'd really like to, and California's definitely out of the question for us." She stretched her arms out in front of her. He was still silent. She nudged him. "Come on. It's like a game. Now you have to say somewhere you'd like to move." 

His jaw tightened, and she realized he'd been holding his breath. 

"I'd prefer somewhere colder." He sounded uncertain. "Like Idaho." 

"No way." She rolled her eyes at him. "There's plenty of cold places in Mexico. And I don't even know what's in Idaho. Probably nothing. What about Wyoming?" 

He raised an eyebrow.

"And you objected to Idaho?" 

"Okay, fine, we'll put the exact location on hold for now." She pulled the blanket up over them again. "I'd like to live in the mountains somewhere - where you can see the stars perfectly clear." 

"That sounds pleasant." 

"Good. We agree on something." She clasped her hands against her chest. "But if we're going to be freezing our asses off in the mountains of Idaho, I want a fireplace. And not that I don't like camping, but sometimes, I wish I had a real bed of my own." 

"A bed and a fireplace. You're not difficult to please. That's simple enough."

The sound of the rain grew louder, and they moved closer to each other. She had never really thought about it that way. 

"I guess it would be, wouldn't it?" She absentmindedly slid a finger in between the buttons of his shirt. "Okay. Your turn. Don't be afraid to dream big. After all, it's just a game."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm back. Sorry for going missing for a while. Things are starting to get busier for me with work/projects/etc so I'm going to do a once-a-week update schedule now. Friday is the day! I think this will be easier for me to stick to. Thanks for reading!


	35. XXXV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for: rough & physically aggressive sexual acts (like physically shoving back and forth & physical restraint, I just want to make it clear and not surprise anyone), uneven sexual power dynamics, a long description of a blowjob, accidental bleeding, blasphemy.
> 
> I think that covers all the bases? This is like half smut, half meandering conversation (as is customary) and not too much plot advancement, so you can easily skip it and you won't lose much story. 
> 
> Will still update next Friday!

"And once we got down to the bottom floor, the lights were all broken and blinking and we couldn't see shit, and it was dead quiet, and then - I swear I'm not making this up - he turns to me and says 'Hey, Six, are these plants supposed to be moving?' and I said 'Don't be ridiculous, plants can't move.' And then he pushes his glasses up like he always does when he's about to be right, and then - guess what? Two of these walking - "

Six paused with her hand still raised and turned her head toward the sound of rustling in the underbrush next to them. After a few seconds of silence, she dropped her hand and looked at Joshua, wondering if he heard it too. Maybe her brain was playing tricks on her because she was thinking about creepy plant people, but she could have sworn she heard something.

"What's wrong, Six?"

Six barely had time to unholster her pistol before she caught the blur of an animal barreling toward them. The Yao Guai bared its teeth and snapped at them, and she raised her gun. Joshua held his arm out and shoved her backwards. He was so pushy and it happened so fast that she backed down and lowered her arm. The only thing that cut through the blur around her was the sound of his gun firing. Her eyes flitted to the enormous, snarling beast in front of him, and she got her bearings back. Six shoved her pistol back on her hip and swung her rifle around. She fired off a shot at the animal's face, then aimed for the lungs and fired two more rounds. While she was reloading, it gave a frenzied final roar and fell down to its side with a thump so huge that she felt it reverberate through the ground.

Joshua lowered his gun and walked forward to inspect the bloody mess, and Six followed him. There was a bullet hole where the animal's eye used to be.

"Good shot." 

All that did was irritate her. She caught herself chewing on her lip as she looked up. 

"Yeah, I know. Speaking of which, what was that whole thing you did back there?"

Although he pointedly did not look at her, his shoulders tensed as he unloaded his gun.

"Yao Guai are dangerous."

She nearly sputtered at how ridiculous of a comment that was. 

"Yeah, I know." She put her hand on her hip. "I've killed plenty of them. Hell, I could've shot that thing with my eyes closed."

"They're larger here than you're used to in the Mojave," he muttered. "Let's keep moving." 

For a second, she stared at him with her mouth open, trying to figure out how she was supposed to respond to that lame justification. Three months ago, he had no problem with asking her to pick through the most dangerous parts of Zion and risk her neck to gather a bunch of broken compasses, so she was baffled at his loss of faith in her abilities now. She took a deep breath as she put her gun away.

"I can handle myself, okay? I'm used to covering my own back. You don't need to do stuff like that. I don't need your help." Six kept her voice calm, but for some reason, when that statement came out of her mouth, he recoiled as if she'd slapped him in the face. His eyes hardened and he looked so pissed that she thought he was going to snap back at her, but instead, his mouth pressed into a hard line under the bandages and he looked away.

"Of course. You don't. I know that." 

Joshua picked up their bags and said nothing else for a long time. To her confusion, he didn't even seem mad anymore, just subdued. Six chalked it up to the fact that neither one of them had been in the best mood that day, and after a while, it faded away into the air as if it hadn't happened. It was their last day out here together, and she wished they weren't both so crabby, but sometimes things just didn't line up how she would have liked them. 

 

 

Six glared at the keyhole and bit the side of her thumb. She'd been working on the lock to this rickety cabin for at least ten minutes, and it still wouldn't budge. Her eyes darted to the rocks scattered around her. She picked one up and threw it through the windowpane next to the door. The glass shattered inward with a satisfying crash, and Six shoved her hand through the center of the hole, avoiding the jagged edges.

"Be careful." Joshua admonished from behind her. She rolled her eyes and groped around for the inside latch on the door. 

"In case you somehow managed to forget this." She pointed at her bullet scar. "Let me remind you that I've been shot in the face. Twice." The tips of her fingers brushed against the deadbolt, and she twisted it open. "A little glass won't stop me. Just chill out."

He crossed his arms across his chest and said nothing, but words weren't necessary. His dissatisfaction was plain. The door swung open, and she led the way inside.

It was smaller than most of the other cabins she'd seen, but it would do for the night. Joshua tried to sweep some of the broken glass out of the way with the side of his foot before they set their bags down. Six crouched beside their bags and unzipped hers. They weren't planning on doing any more walking that evening, so she took her bra off under her shirt and tossed it on top of her bag.

"How did you do that?"

When she looked up, Joshua was staring at her like he'd just seen a magic trick. The utter mystification on his face almost made her laugh.

"Oh, it's easy. You just pull the straps down under the shirt." It was hard to imagine that he'd never seen anyone else do that before. _He was probably never married, then,_ she thought. She wondered again if he'd ever had a girlfriend, or any kind of serious relationship. He'd never once talked about any past romantic partners, but it made her feel uneasy to contemplate that he might be comparing her to someone else, even subconsciously.

The little gnaw of jealousy that followed that thought was uncomfortable. In her head, she tried to gather up all of the reasons why it was stupid of her to feel that way.  _Of course he's had relationships. Probably several. Don't be ridiculous,_ she scolded herself. Everyone had a past - even her. Joshua hadn't asked her any questions about her past love life, which was somewhat out of character for him. There wasn't much to tell, anyway. Meeting bored NCR soldiers in bars and secretly checking their dog tags when she'd forgotten their names mid-hookup wasn't that interesting. She'd never even been on a date, which her friends back home delighted in giving her shit about, not that they really had room to talk.

 _The two of us aren't together._ That was an excellent reason, and probably the only one she really needed. They'd made no promises or commitments to each other, and that's why this was working for both of them. She had nothing to be jealous of in the first place. Besides, she wasn't sure how marriage or relationships between men and women worked in the Legion, but the selfish streak in her really, really didn't want to know the answer.

Joshua picked up his book from the table and went to sit on the cot in the back corner. Before all of this, she only ever saw him reading in a chair, but it cracked her up whenever he read sitting up in bed. He always looked even more concentrated than usual, like he completely forgot what was happening around him.

"Would you read out loud?"

"Of course." He cleared his throat and began to read without looking up. "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a - " He abruptly stopped speaking.

"What's wrong?"

His mouth pressed into a line underneath the bandages.

"Let me find something else," he spoke under his breath as he flipped through the pages.

"No, that was fine. You can keep going." Most of the time, she wasn't paying attention to what he was saying. She just liked to hear him speak.

"If you insist." He continued with trepidation. "Know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh."

Her head shot up, and she watched the stiff expression on his face carefully. _Oh. This is one of the sex-is-bad parts. I wonder how he explains that to himself._  After nearly a week of jumping each each other's bones every chance they got, she'd practically forgotten that was one of his rules. Maybe whatever they had going on wasn't reconcilable with his beliefs at all, and he was just ignoring it and hoping for the best.

"Are you trying to tell me something?" She teased. The way he looked up at her was so solemn that she almost felt bad.

"Of course not. I don't - I'll read another passage."

"I'm just messing around with you. I've been called much worse." She stood up and pushed the bag to the side with her foot, and went to join him on the bed.

"Watch out for the glass." He glanced down at the floor with distaste. The springs creaked as she settled down next to him and got comfortable.

"So," she began, running her hand up his arm. "What's your stance on sharing a bed with an unmarried woman? That's pretty bad, right?"

"We all fall short of the glory of God." His voice was dry, and she wasn't certain if he was being dead serious or wryly joking with her. Somehow, in his own enigmatic way, it felt like both at the same time.

"Interesting. Can you keep reading?" 

"But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit."

She inched closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder in conciliation. Ever so slightly, he leaned against her until their sides were touching. She ran her finger up the bandages on the inside of his forearm again, and he stopped speaking. Even though they were hardly touching, she could feel how fast his muscles went rigid against her body. It gave her an idea so good she had to hold back her smile.

"Go ahead. I'm listening." She used her sweetest voice and nestled her head further into his shoulder.

"Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is -"

She leaned in and pressed her lips to his neck. He put the book down immediately.

"No," she put her hand on his, and pressed it back down on the book. "Keep reading, please."

"I - "

"I want you to keep reading."

A question formed on his lips, but he picked the book up anyway and continued like she asked.

"Can I move these bandages?" She whispered in his ear, enjoying the way his posture tensed at her voice.

"Yes."

Gently, she pushed aside a few pieces of fabric. He reached up to help her, exposing a small spot of his scarred skin. She eased against him, just barely teasing her bottom lip on his skin. The beat of his pulse jumped faster underneath her lips, and she tilted her head and brushed her mouth more firmly against the uneven skin.

"Every sin that a man doeth is without the body." His voice reverberated in his throat as she kissed his neck until he sighed and planted a hand on her knee. She gradually ghosted her hand up his thigh, and despite his stoic composure, as her fingers trailed up higher, his breathing grew heavier. She paused, making him wait for it, and she could sense how badly he wanted her to continue. Her hands were steady as she undid the buckle of his belt and unzipped him. With her eyes still on his face, she reached into his pants. The book blocked her sight, but she could feel him already swelling from anticipation. She grazed her hand along his length, warm and stiff, and felt him throb in response. She smiled against his neck and kissed the bare skin again as she gave him a lazy stroke up and down.

"This is wrong." His voice rasped in his throat.

She withdrew her hand and tilted her head against his shoulder. The mental conflict played out on his face, and she gave him a few seconds to work it out, although she had a pretty good hunch he was going to give in.

He looked back down and continued reading. The exposed skin of his neck moved as he spoke, and Six relished how difficult it was for him to say no to her. To reward him for his compliance, she wrapped her hand around his length and slid her thumb over his head. As soon as his voice gave a small quake, she ducked her head down in his lap, edging it underneath the book.

"What are you doing?" 

"Just relax. I want to do this."

This time, he responded fast. He took a deep breath and lifted his book higher to give her easier access. She looked up at him out of the corner of her eye before she moved any further. With some hesitation, he stared back down at the page and began to speak again. It wasn't clear if his voice was labored from desire or anxiety. A rush of excitement overcame her at finally getting to look at his cock so openly. She eagerly ran her thumb along the side and leaned forward before she stopped short. It was going to be difficult to get him all the way in her mouth, but she really wanted to try.

"Damn." She sucked in her breath and tilted her head, wrapping her hand around his shaft and giving a testing stroke.

"I know -" He sighed. "You can stop."

She tore her eyes away and looked up at him. It took her a few seconds to process what he was saying, and then she recognized the flicker of hesitation in his eyes. _He thinks it's about the scars._

Her eyes darted back down. The scarring was pronounced and painful-looking, but if she was honest, it wasn't nearly as bad as she expected from how sensitive he acted about it. The skin wasn't even as damaged as his hands or the area around his mouth. It didn't matter to her, anyway. She found him completely irresistible.

For a second, she worried about how to handle it without making him feel self-conscious, but she decided to just have some fun with it.

"I'm sorry." She looked up into his eyes and gave him her most innocent smile. "I've never done this with someone as big as you before." She tapped a finger on her bottom lip. "I have to adapt my usual strategy."

His eyebrows shot up in mild surprise. _That was the right thing to say,_ she mentally congratulated herself. He was probably the most unique person she'd ever met, but some things still worked the same on pretty much everyone with a dick and an ego. 

"In that case, by all means, take your time." Much to her satisfaction, he sounded a little stunned. Maybe she laid the coyness on a little too thick, but damn, it was worth it. 

She leaned forward and gently lapped at his rigid head, and the long exhale that came out of his mouth was electrifying. With slow, careful movements, she ran her tongue along the shaft, testing the thin smooth areas of skin and the thicker, rough ones. She wanted to make sure he wasn't in too much pain, but he didn't tell her to slow down or stop. After she savored the sound of his ragged breathing, she took him all the way into her mouth, and his hand clamped down on her shoulder. The slightest change in speed or pressure with her hand or mouth made his voice do something different. She flattened her tongue out, and he broke off into a sharp gasp. For a few seconds, it was silent except for his hard breathing and the bed creaking. She pulled him out of her mouth and met his eyes with disapproval.

"You stopped reading."

"Six, honestly - "

She pulled her hand away from him and tapped her fingers along his thigh without saying a word. He looked back down and resumed reading as if she had him on a goddamn string. 

"Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you - "

She took him back in her hand and swirled her tongue around his head, and guided his free hand to the back of her head and encouraged him to wind it in her hair. She tilted her head and met his gaze, wanting to give him a nice show, and he groaned and pushed her head down in response.

"Which - which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" She bobbed her head deeper, and felt the head of his cock hit the back of her throat. His words came out faster, more frantic, and the tension built up so high that she couldn't help but move her hand and her mouth faster.

"Therefore glorify God in your body...and in your spirit, which are - God, that's - which are God's." His voice dropped even lower and his grip tightened in her hair so hard it stung. She sighed around him in response and lifted her eyes to meet his again. He tossed the book to the side so abruptly that she sat up. As he rose from the edge of the bed and got to his feet, her stomach tightened in apprehension.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No." He secured the fold of his cuff, and looked up to meet her eyes. "Now get on your knees."

She tried not to look too excited as she settled down on the floor in front of him.

"Open your mouth."

She ran her lips along the side of his rigid shaft and felt the blood rushing through the thin skin. He wound his hand through her hair and tilted her head up.

"I know you heard me," he said patiently.

As enjoyable as it was to hear him order her around, she liked defying him even more. Her mouth stayed closed, and she skimmed her lips over his head, making sure her touch was tormentingly light. With a groan of frustration, he gripped her hair harder and shoved her head forward.

"Get it wet or it's going to hurt later. Your choice."

She shuddered and parted her lips until he slid in her mouth.

"Good." He put his hand on the side of her face and pressed against his own shaft through her cheek, and sighed in pleasure. She pushed her head forward until he hit the back of her throat, and her eyes watered. She looked up at him, and he caressed the side of her face.

"How's that?" He asked. She nodded, but he caught her head and held it still.

"Tell me."

As soon as she tried to talk, he thrust further into her mouth again.

"Good girl," he groaned as he pumped in and out of her mouth at a steady rhythm, holding her by the hair. Of all the shameless shit she'd done so far, that was the first thing that made her face flush with shyness. She didn't think it was possible to get any wetter, but she was so desperate for him to touch her that the ache between her thighs was uncomfortable. He pulled out of her mouth and wiped away the saliva on her lips with his thumb. With slow movements, he crouched down and pushed her hair back from her face. 

"Get on the bed."

She briefly considered it. Almost as quickly, she lifted her eyes and gave him a tiny shrug. He hesitated, and she escalated her indifference to a taunting smile that she knew would provoke him. Apparently, he decided to accept her challenge. Without a word, he pushed her to the floor and got on top of her. She strained against him, but he held her down and shoved his knee between her thighs without the slightest bit of effort. _He's been holding himself back before now._ With his size and strength, she knew she wasn't getting out from under him unless he decided to let her.

He undid her pants and helped her as she tugged them down around her legs. Once he threw them to the side, he leaned over her.

"I don't like repeating myself, and I won't do it again." His voice rumbled in her ear, and the unspoken _or-else_ on the end of that statement made her shiver. The bandages were still over his mouth, but he kissed her on the cheek anyway before moving back to her ear. "Are we in agreement?"

She planted her hands on his chest and shoved him back as hard as she could manage.

"Only if you prove it." 

With one goddamn terrifying icy glare, she knew she fucked up, and she couldn't have been more thrilled about it. He grabbed her and twisted her over to her stomach. Rising up on her elbows, she glanced over her shoulder as he began to unwind the bandages from his hands. She pushed back, grinding her ass into him.

"Stop moving around." Joshua went back to freeing his thumb, and she pressed against him again, harder. With no warning, he shoved her down with a grunt. The side of her face nearly smacked into the wooden floor, and pain radiated out from her palm and elbow from catching herself. For a second, she was too stunned to move. He relaxed his grip on her.

"Are you all right?" In response, she smiled at him over her shoulder and pushed up against him again. "You liked that?" 

She nodded her head as best as she could against the floor. 

"Sometimes, you really don't get it."

"And sometimes, you have a problem with asking for what you want." He leaned over her. "I'm more than willing to help you learn. Now, tell me." 

"I want you to fuck me." She rose up against him again, and he finally gave in and pressed his erection into her in response. Her stomach tightened at the friction through the thin fabric of her underwear.

"Good." His hand swept up her back, pushing her shirt up and exposing her shoulders. After a moment, she felt something rough on her lower back, and she realized he was slowly kissing a line up her spine. By the time he planted a kiss between her shoulder blades, his body was flush against her back and she was a quivering mess. 

He reached down and tugged her underwear halfway down her thighs. Instead of his fingers like she expected, she felt the head of his cock. Without hesitation, he buried himself in her in one sharp motion and she jolted forward with a yelp. His hands found her hips and he dragged her back onto him without giving her any time to get used to the overwhelming feeling of him filling her entirely. 

"I know you." He growled in her ear, and it sent a shiver down her spine. "This is what you wanted all along, isn't it?"

She turned around to shove him, but he grabbed her arm and pinned it against her back as he plunged into her again. The shock receded, and every time he sank into her, she was unable to do anything but sigh at how incredible it felt. He reached down between her legs, then abruptly pulled his hand away. Her own hands balled into fists, tense and needy at the loss of contact. The pain in her palm pulsed, but she could hardly feel it through the haze.

"I've hardly even touched you, and you're soaking wet." His voice was soft in her ear now, making her face flush again. "Have you thought about me doing this to you before?"

He brushed her hair off of her face with surprising tenderness, and she nodded her head against the floor. 

"Remember what we discussed? You need to speak up." He slammed into her so hard that her back arched, and she cried out. 

"Yes, yes," she confessed. "Yes, I've thought about you so many times." 

At once, he slowed down, only giving her leisurely, shallow strokes for his own enjoyment, his hands digging into her hips as he moved her body the way he wanted. She sank all the way back on him, and he broke his composure, letting a sigh slip out against her ear. When she tried to take control again, he planted a hand between her shoulder blades and pushed her further down on the floor, forcing her hips to still. The weight of his body made it difficult to move, but she twisted around underneath him until he finally got a hold on her and wrestled both of her arms behind her back.

The sound of clinking metal came from behind her, and she realized he was taking his belt off. He wound it around her wrists and tightened it, immobilizing her arms as he ran his hands up and down her body. The bunched-up fabric of her shirt pulled around her shoulders and throat as he wound his fingers into it for leverage. He leaned over and rolled into her slower and harder, biting her neck and kissing the sting away, asking her if anyone else fucks her like this, and in response she choked out no, no, only him. The thrusts became more forceful, his grip on her back more controlling.

"Yes, fuck, keep doing that, I'm - " she broke off, clenching her hands against his shirt and giving in to the mounting bliss. To her surprise, he slowed to an indolent pace, barely making the slightest movements at all, tormenting her to provoke a reaction. In vain, she tried to push her hips back against him, but she was held completely still, unable to move. A rush of adrenaline surged through her veins, heightening the pressure of his body against her, making her crave it even more.

"Come on."

He stopped moving. She could have screamed in frustration. 

"Please," she begged, unable to control herself any longer. With his hand twined deep in her hair, he pulled her head back until she could see him.

"Look at me."

She lifted her eyes and met his gaze, and she felt him pulse inside of her. Slowly, he pulled out and slid all the way in, making her relish every second of his cock pressing into her until it was almost too much.

"You're mine."

In a calmer moment, she might have found problems with that statement, but her brain had checked out a while ago. However, the part of her that was currently calling the shots enjoyed it way too much for her to care. He thrust into her again, finally picking up his rhythm, and the sensation built up higher and higher, white hot, until she was close to losing herself completely. 

"Yes, please, I -" she broke off into a near-sob. Her hands jerked back as he tugged on the belt.

"Mine." His voice dropped to a low snarl. 

She cried out again, and he released her hair and groaned as he pulled out of her. He pressed his cock back and forth against her ass, and she felt the warmth on her skin as he came on her back.

Without pause, he sat back and pulled her against his chest so that her head tipped back onto his shoulder. One hand cupped her breast, holding her against his chest so tight she could hardly move, and the other hand pushed between her legs. The friction of his fingers dragging up against her sent waves of relief through her body, so close to coming that it was unbearable. After he started kissing her neck and murmuring praises in her ear, it only took a few short moments for her to come apart completely, throwing her weight against him and shaking.

She was unable to focus on anything but the feeling of his hand running up and down her side, predictable and steady in rhythm. His body behind her was solid and warm and comforting and she leaned back against him, utterly limp and exhausted, catching her breath and burying her face into his neck, feeling both of their heartbeats slowing down in tandem.

She went to push her hair off her face, but her hands wouldn't budge. A wave of panic threatened to overcome her. She jerked against the belt around her wrists.

"Please take this off." She meant to keep her demeanor calm, but he must have picked up on her urgency anyway, and he moved quickly as he undid her. A surge of embarrassment at her overreaction washed over her, and she tried to brush it off as she looked down at her hands.

Startling smears of bright red coated her hands and arms. The bandages on one of Joshua's hands were stained with blood. A few splotches of red marked the front of his shirt, stark against the crisp white fabric.

"Is this mine or yours?" Six tilted her head down. 

"Six." He sounded equal parts irritated and worried. "The glass." 

"Oh." It came to her attention that her palm hurt because there was an entire shard of glass embedded in it. Meeting a grisly resistance, she worked it out of her skin and tossed it across the room. More blood rolled down her wrist and dripped down her forearm. The pain sharpened, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Joshua got to his feet and ransacked through their bags until he found a cloth and a roll of bandages. With one hand, Six tried to shimmy back into her underwear, and he reached out to help her tug the fabric up over her hips, which made her smile despite the pain. He knelt beside her and laid his supplies out. Once she sat back down, he bent over her hand in deep focus, wiping up the blood and cleaning the cut. Six didn't quite know what to do with herself, so she sat still and glanced around the room. Collectively, they looked like one big fucking mess. Aside from the blood all over both of them, her shirt was soaked with sweat, and probably come, now that she was thinking about it. The first thing she was doing when she got back tomorrow was taking a bath, even if the water was freezing. 

"The bandages are sterile. Don't worry."

 _Definitely wasn't worrying._ She couldn't help but watch with interest as he wrapped the fabric around her hand with practiced efficiency.

"How do you clean them?"

"Boiling water. Disinfectant, whenever I find any." He fastened the bandages on her palm. "How does that feel?"

She flexed her hand.

"Tight."

"Good. It should." The ribbons of red-stained fabric around his own hand hit the floor. He opened her canteen and poured water over his scarred palm. It ran down his fingers until it dripped onto the bandages, muddling the dark red spots until they bloomed pink. 

"Uh. Sorry for bleeding on you." 

He gave her a look that told her it was inconsequential, and she shouldn't have even said anything about it in the first place.

"You should be more attentive." She was about to retort that she had been understandably distracted, but he narrowed his eyes and spoke again. "Are you feeling lightheaded?" 

"No." She looked down at her hand, neatly tucked away in white. "I bleed a lot in my line of work. It doesn't bother me." 

"Obviously." Joshua packed the supplies back in the bag, taking care to straighten out the things he'd tossed around earlier. "You know, the first time I saw blood - a great deal of it, not just a small injury - I nearly fainted." 

She was unable to contain her disbelief. The idea of him being that sensitive was just too ridiculous to imagine.

"No way. You've got to be joking."

"I'm not." His hands went to the top button of his shirt. "I'll never forget it. I was around eighteen at the time. We were attacked by a pack of nightstalkers. I shot them all down, but when I turned around and saw the bite wounds, I nearly hit the ground. I wasn't hurt, but someone had to support me when we walked back to camp." 

If she thought the previous detail was good, that was the icing on the cake. She stared at the man in front of her as he unbuttoned his shirt, and tried to imagine him being that young and inexperienced. The mental image of cocky teenager Joshua instantly passing out and falling on his ass was way too entertaining. She leaned forward and rested her head on her unbandaged hand. On the rare occasions when she could get him to tell an actual story about his life, it delighted her. He was usually stingy with details.

"Geez. It wasn't even your own blood?" 

"No. We were - " He broke off and looked up at the wall as his hands stopped moving. "It was someone else." The previous lightheartedness in his tone was gone. "Of course, blood is no longer a problem for me. I've become accustomed to it." He unbuttoned the bottom of his shirt in silence, and his shoulders stiffened as he removed it. 

"Good idea." She stumbled to her feet and joined him next to the bags, snatching a clean shirt off of the ground from where Joshua had moved it. He glanced up at her, and she held the shirt up to her chest. 

"Turn around. I have to preserve my modesty, don't I?" 

He shook his head, but turned away like she asked. Most likely, he thought she was just being a smartass, but she had another purpose, too. She figured he was about to change his bandages, and although he'd seen her undressed plenty of times, it felt more natural to her when they were both looking away instead of just her. As she tugged her shirt over her head, she thought about his rules and felt a pinch of guilt at what they'd done earlier, for Joshua's sake rather than hers.

"Does what we did bother you?" She tossed her shirt to the side and picked up the new one. 

"What are you referring to?" 

"I just..." she trailed off as she stuck her head through the opening and pulled it down around her shoulders. "I mean, the not-holy activities we...incorporated your holy book in. Does that make you feel guilty?" 

"Yes." He said it without sentiment or hesitation. Her heart sank. 

"I'm sorry. I won't do things like that anymore."

"You aren't a believer. Why does it concern you?"

"Because you are." She rested her shoulder against the wall. "And I don't want to put you in a position to do things that make you feel bad."

He was silent for much longer than she was comfortable with. 

"I feel guilt every day about nearly everything I do, or have done. My choices are my own." 

She froze.  _Everything?_ The enormity of that statement confounded her as she tried to grapple with it. She tried to think of something to tell him, some kind of advice or consolation, but she simply didn't have an answer. 

"Well, I'm just saying that I don't want to contribute to that." She pushed up the sleeves on her shirt and began to tie her hair up. They didn't speak for a few more minutes. Six stared down at the bandage on her hand and began to pull at loose thread on her palm as she waited for him.

"I'm finished." 

With a yawn, she turned around and walked toward the bed, but Joshua caught her with a hand on her waist before she made it. She opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong, but his face was drawn up in such a grave expression that she halted.

"There's something I would like to say to you. Please listen carefully." His words were slow and measured like he'd planned them out, and she couldn't help but feel an ominous wave pass over her at how serious he sounded. He took her hand in his, and his gaze only grew in intensity.

"First, I want you to know that you bring me joy, and you remind me to never cease looking for evidence of God's splendor and grace." 

She must have looked startled, because he spoke a little faster. 

"Secondly, I am a sinner. I have unrighteous, selfish thoughts every day. And you help me realize those, too, but you do not cause them. You have never brought me guilt or shame. Those feelings are between God and me, and I will struggle with them for the rest of my life. But you-" He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. "You challenge me to think more, to humble myself, and be more like the person God calls me to be. I admit, it's..." his eyebrows furrowed. "Difficult to understand, from the outside. But I know what I believe." He squeezed her hand and dropped it. "That's all."

After a few seconds, she crossed to the other side of the room without paying attention to what her feet were doing. Her mind reeled. She wondered if he was actually telling the truth. His faith was probably the most important thing in his life. The gravity of his words - the idea that he was attempting to make a space for her in all of that - made her hopeful and scared at the same time.

The muscles of his back shifted underneath the bandages as he lifted the lantern to the windowsill by the cot. With careful movements, he climbed into bed next to her. She tugged at her bandage again, and he separated her hands and held them in his. 

"Is it too tight?"

She stared at both of their hands, wrapped in the same white fabric. Somehow, he seemed to know she had something on her mind, and he stayed silent. 

"Y'know, if you ever want to take your bandages off in front of me someday, it's okay. I want you to know that your burns don't bother me as much as you seem to think they do."

He gave her no reaction. After a few seconds, he frowned like he was thinking. Six kept her eyes on him, awaiting his response. 

"I see."

It was unclear if that meant yes, or no, or maybe, but she figured she'd put it out there, and it was up to him if he wanted to take her up on it. Her palm throbbed with pain again, dragging her out of her thoughts. He lifted his book up to the light and leafed through the pages. She crossed her leg over his at the ankle. That was one way they could touch for extended periods of time that didn't seem to hurt him. He rarely told her to stop touching him, but she could still tell when he was suffering.

"Okay. I need a distraction. If you read out loud, I promise not to pull any tricks this time. I'm on my best behavior."  

"Gladly. You ought to listen. The word of the Lord is powerful enough to change even the most wicked hearts." 

"You are such an asshole sometimes." She would have shoved him, but given the circumstances, she settled for running her fingertips along the back of his hand. "Too bad I've gotten attached to you." The crinkles stayed around his eyes as he flipped through the pages, and her own smile stayed on her face for way too long, but she couldn't help it. It felt like this crumbling cabin with broken glass and bloody clothes all over the floor was the warmest, most secure place in the entire world.


	36. XXXVI

Joshua sat on the edge of the bed, watching the beams of sunlight shift across the wooden floor in front of him. The sensation of the brisk morning air in his nose and lungs was pleasant and crisp, and he thought about how grateful he was to be here, alone in the wilderness without other living people for miles, a tiny refuge from the rest of the world.

For a couple of weeks, life was simpler than it had been in a long, long time. In theory, they were in the valley to gather supplies and check the trails, but most days, they scarcely remembered what exactly they were supposed to be doing. All they did was hike and talk and stay in bed together, and those days were so pleasantly full, and they passed by him as swift and easy as if his eyes were covered. His gaze fell on the makeshift battle map spread out on the floor, and his joy was punctured by its ever-present companion sorrow.

"This has to happen at Hoover Dam. It has to be taken and - here's maybe the harder part: held. I've thought about it, and there's no other way. And then - " 

It was the first time Six paused in a few minutes. She picked up her shirt off the ground and dropped it in the appropriate spot on the floor.

"That'll be Helios One. Anyway - "

She continued to explain her plans with the various pieces of clothing they'd stripped off of each other earlier this morning. They were supposed to already be on their way back to camp, but unsurprisingly, they got sidetracked. For the past two weeks, they'd been nearly numb to the outside world, concerned with nothing more than frantically burying themselves in each other. At times, it felt like the only way to stave off the guilt that brought him was diving further into it.

Fortunately, he managed to pick up his shirt before Six annexed it, so he slipped his arms through the sleeves and watched her. She gestured about some maneuver she was constructing in her mind, and the downy arch of her shoulder tensed, perfectly backlit in the sun. Over the past week, he learned that she had a very welcome habit of walking around without a shirt on. Just as he was hoping she'd comment on the east side of her map again so he could see her turn around, she abruptly stopped speaking and wrapped her blanket higher over her shoulders.

"You're not listening, are you?"

He leaned back, trying to come up with a way to hide the fact that he had almost no idea what was happening for the past five minutes.

"Forgive me. The messenger is distracting."

"Forgiveness granted, but come on." She flashed him a sweet smile and settled in his lap. He held back his reaction to the ache in his skin. "You know a lot about all this. I could use your help here. Please?"

The way she widened her eyes at him was calculated, but it was still difficult for him to refuse. His hands found her hips and he looked over her shoulder at the boot she'd kicked into place to stand for New Vegas.

"What about the NCR?"

"They trust me. I want to let them wear themselves out against the Legion, string 'em along for a while, then - " she put her hand on his back and pantomimed a stabbing motion. "You know. Quick and painless."

That seemed to be a favored tactic of hers, and he understood why. It played to her strengths. She was patient when facing a foe and could be unassuming until she saw her opportunity to strike. 

"And the Legion?"

She sighed and rested her forehead against his shoulder. The faint scent of woodsmoke still clung to her hair. 

"Can't pull off anything sneaky. I think I have to come at them openly."

"They might try to get you on their side." Joshua looked down at his shirt, and he must have accidentally grimaced, because Six fastened the top button for him. The hand he bandaged for her still looked stiff. He moved his hands in front of hers so she couldn't continue further, and buttoned the rest up himself.

"Have you lost your mind?"

"No."

"But I hate them. And they hate me back. It's mutual."

"Caesar doesn't care about that. Keep besting his assassins, and I wouldn't be surprised if he attempts to seek your assistance."

The bed creaked as she leaned back and tilted her head.

"And why the hell would I ever work for him?" Her voice was incredulous, and he restrained himself from letting out a sigh. This was all very plain to him, but he tried to be forbearing with her.

"You wouldn't. But he would try."

"Does he really think I'd trust him? I'd have to be a double idiot to fall for anything he told me."

"And you're not." He straightened his shoulders, painfully stiff from sleeping in one position for so long. "But neither is he." _Unfortunately._ Maybe if Edward were less intelligent, he would have died years ago, his bones forgotten in some ravine in Arizona. The entire course of the world could have changed, hinging on one stray bullet or one miscalculation.  _I would be dead, too, lying right next to him._ With a sickening pang in his stomach, Joshua tried to shove that thought down.

"Isn't letting women fight against his beliefs?"

"I don't think he truly believes in anything. You're looking at this incorrectly. We - " He began talking more rapidly, hoping she hadn't noticed that word slipping out. "The Legion values strength and capability above all. If Caesar thinks an enemy has proven themselves strong - and therefore, useful - he's likely to use them for his own benefit." Joshua looked down and rolled up his sleeves. "He's a pragmatist, more than anything." His voice came out more grudging than he intended.

She chewed on her bottom lip, deep in thought, and ran her fingers along his chest. 

"I...really don't know about that."

"I do."

She climbed off of him and rose to her feet. Her mouth was still tense with doubt.

"Well, thanks. That's good information to know, I guess. Now, come on. Let's disassemble the map and get on our way." She dropped the blanket and pulled her shirt back over her head. "We have a long walk back."

 

 

The sun was just beginning to drop behind the mountains when they finally made it into the main camp. When they passed the entrance, Six bit the edge of her thumb and looked out at the group of people milling about.

"Stop that." He didn't look at her, but in his peripheral vision, he saw her hand drop from her mouth. The sheer amount of people was probably making her nervous. 

"Let's go sort out the supplies we brought back."

Six picked up the bag and slung it over her shoulder. They set off into the center of the camp to find an empty table to spread out their items. Her eyes scanned over the people again, and Joshua followed her gaze.

"Do you - "

"Yes."

He saw them at the same time she did. Four men stood near one of the fires, talking among themselves. Three of them were clad in leather armor and wore revolvers on their hips. The other man was in decent but deteriorated clothes. _Outsiders._ They looked like members of a caravan, but the Dead Horses weren't expecting any visitors. _That I am aware of,_ he corrected himself. He had been away for almost a fortnight, and he wasn't entirely sure what the current circumstances were in the camp. The Dead Horses were more than capable of handling their own non-combat affairs, but he felt a stab of guilt at neglecting the tribe for so long.

"Does the guy with nice shoes look like he's carrying a gun, but doesn't want anyone to know?" Six tilted her head.

Joshua squinted at the man, thankful yet again for Six's almost uncanny level of awareness of her surroundings.

"Under his jacket. Left side." After everything they'd been through, his ire was rising at the thought of anyone trying to come in and make trouble here now. Perhaps Caesar already sent more frumentarii to finish what the White Legs couldn't.

"I'm gonna talk to them and figure out what they want." She dropped the box of bullets she was holding back into the bag. Joshua began to walk in front of her, but she put her hand on his arm. "You should hang back for a second."

"Not a chance."

"Let me try first. I feel like they might be a little more open with me. If they give me any shit, you can come give them the bad-cop routine. Okay?"

As much as he didn't want to acquiesce, it was a decent idea, especially if the visitors had any ill intent. 

"Fine. If we fire, leave one of them alive." 

"You see the one with fancy shoes? If they draw on me, I'll shoot his trigger hand off. You take care of the rest." 

"Good plan," he muttered. Losing a hand would make him rather quick to talk if he wanted to beg for a chance at not bleeding to death. 

They moved their supplies to the table next to the fire. Now, they were close enough that Joshua could hear them talking. He busied himself sorting out the bullets as Six joined the men.

"Oh, hell. It's you, isn't it? I thought you were dead."

Joshua knew it was inevitable that he'd be recognized, but he still dreaded it. To his surprise, when he looked up, the men were staring at Six instead.

"Are you the courier?"

All the warmth drained from her face as if brought about by the flick of a switch. Her expression was so passionless that it was hard to believe she was even the same person who'd been smiling at him all week.

"I'm a courier."

"No, the courier. The famous one."

Her eyebrows wrinkled up.

"Maybe. What do you mean, you thought I was dead?"

"That's what they've been saying on the radio."

She put her hands on her hips. It might not have been noticeable to the others, but Joshua knew she was carefully weighing that information. One of the men leaned forward and squinted at her.

"I heard your face was all fucked up. It only looks a little fucked up to me."

"Sorry to disappoint." She finally cracked a hint of a smile. "I've been hanging out here for a while. What else has been going on in the Mojave?"

Joshua looked back down at the bag of supplies. Their conversation sounded normal enough. They told Six they were from the caravan company, and he felt himself relax slightly. 

Then, their conversation abruptly died, as if they wouldn't even dare to breathe too loud.

 _Now they're looking at me._ His eyes lingered on the white fabric around his hands. The mix of terror and disgust aimed in his direction was familiar, but it had been some time since he'd met anyone new. Six was the last person he introduced himself to, and her face was covered for their first few interactions. He never knew what she thought when she saw him for the first time, although it wasn't hard to imagine.

Joshua set the boxes down and went to join the group, but to his surprise, Six stepped closer to the men. Her words were too quiet to comprehend, but her clipped tone was obvious, and Joshua could tell they were talking about him. The men stepped back from her, and one of them held his hand out.

"Sorry, miss. We didn't mean any harm."

"Great." She took her gloves off and tucked them into her pocket, and the silence sat awkwardly for a moment until Joshua introduced himself.

Dealing with the caravan workers went smoothly enough, but Joshua's gaze kept darting back to Six, who stood at his side with her arms drawn up across her chest and a sour expression on her face. He was bewildered at her reaction, but whatever she said to them must have worked. The men stared at him with wide eyes, but they didn't ask him any questions about himself. 

The men were from the same caravan company as the one Six came with, and they were only mildly disappointed when Joshua told them about the attack from the White Legs.

"It happens. I don't exactly give a rat's ass. I just need something to tell my boss." The leader of the group raised his hat and scratched his head. "Well, we'll be out of here soon." 

"You're more than welcome to stay if you need to. We have enough room." 

"Let's say a few days, then, and we'll head out. Thanks for the hospitality." 

The men dispersed back into the crowd. Six looked over her shoulder at the group as they walked away. Joshua saw one of the guards give her a cigarette while they were all talking. It surprised him, because he wasn't aware that she smoked. One of the other tribals pulled Six away to talk, and she nodded at him to go on. He was reluctant to leave her until he heard someone calling his name.

"Joshua!" 

He looked up, and Waking Cloud was waving at him. Her youngest daughter clutched onto her hand. He approached them slowly. Most of the children in the tribes were used to him and didn't cry when they saw him anymore, but he tried to take care not to startle them.

"Hello, Joshua." She smiled. "It feels like a while since I've seen you. I wanted to see how you were."

"We're well. Busy, with all the expansion. Truthfully, I've been away for a while. We only returned today." He rubbed the bandages on the back of his hand. "How are the Sorrows?" 

"Good."

The child tugged on her mother's arm, and Waking Cloud nudged her forward. "Say hi. You know him." The girl shook her head, suspicious. 

"How old are you now?" Joshua crouched down to her eye level.

The girl darted behind Waking Cloud's knee, then peeked out.

"Four." She held up three small fingers.

"Hm. Three?" Joshua matched the three fingers. "Or four?" He put another one up. She shook her head, and a smile spread across her face.

"No." She poked his finger, and he put it down.

"In that case, you are one...two...three."

"Three." She agreed.

"Your English gets better every time I see you." He looked up at Waking Cloud. "I suppose you have a good teacher."

Waking Cloud rolled her eyes as she leaned over and hoisted her daughter up onto her hip. Joshua stood up and put his hands in his pockets. The smile stayed on his face as he watched the little girl flop across her arms.

"She's been in a bad mood all day. I'm surprised you got her to talk." The girl pulled at Waking Cloud's ear, which she barely even acknowledged. "So, how have you been? I must have misspoken earlier, but when I asked, I meant yourself, not the tribe." 

"I'm fine."

"How is Six?"

"She's fine."

She bounced her daughter on her hip and peered around the crowd. "Well, where is our friend? She is still here, right?" 

He saw Six standing with the others, and she was already staring at him with an expression so rare that it took him a few seconds to identify. _Pity._  She must have been watching him with Waking Cloud's daughter. Instantly, he wished he hadn't told her about regretting he'd never had a family of his own. He neither wanted nor needed sympathy from anyone, especially not from her. Waking Cloud waved, and Joshua tried to ignore the knot in his stomach as she joined them. Waking Cloud threw her free arm around Six and kissed her on the cheek. 

"It's good to see you." The smile fell off of her face as she lifted Six's bandaged hand. "What happened?" 

"Oh, I cut it on a broken bottle while we were out in the canyon." Six shrugged. "It's not bad." It was such a convincing lie that Joshua would have believed her, had he not been there himself. 

"You're always getting her into trouble." Waking Cloud clicked her tongue. Joshua knew she was joking, but he didn't laugh. The discomfort in his stomach lingered as Waking Cloud dropped Six's hand.

"She finds it well enough on her own." He folded his arms across his chest and tried to suppress his growing agitation, all the more irritating because he couldn't figure out where exactly it was coming from.

 

 

Some days, his physical pain was worse than others, and Joshua wished more than anything that today wasn't one of those days. After a of couple hours, he excused himself and went to his bed early, but he knew he would be awake all night. He figured he could start one of the books he picked up over the past week. Trips out of camp were always a good opportunity to search for new ones. He found one about the geology and rock formations of Zion, probably from an old gift shop. He preferred less technical subjects, but it would do for a distraction.

The flap of his tent shook, and his hand moved to his gun.

"It's me."

At the sound of her voice, he relaxed.

"Come in."

The entrance of the tent parted, and Six ducked inside. Without saying anything, she crossed to the bag that he hadn't found time to unpack yet. She knelt down and rummaged around like she owned it.

"May I help you?" He laid the book down beside him.

She lifted a shirt out and waved it at him.

"You thief. This is my favorite shirt to sleep in." She unrolled it and threw it over her shoulder. For a moment, she clasped her hands like she was unsure of what to say, but she seemed on edge. "So I was wondering, do you care if I stay in here tonight?"

He didn't want to let her down, but the thought of being touched right now made him want to recoil. He could barely sit in one position for long, let alone endure physical contact. They'd encountered this problem a few times already, and she'd been gracious and reassuring enough on the nights when he couldn't touch her, but the disappointment crashed down on him anyway.

"We can't sleep together." He tapped his fingers on the cover of the book. 

"Oh." Her face was restrained, but the crestfallen note in her voice made him look away from her eyes. She rubbed her hands on her knees and stood up. "Goodnight, then. See you tomorrow." Without so much as a parting glance back, she turned and shut the entrance behind her. After a few moments of silence, Joshua removed his gun from its holster and laid it to the side.  

The tent flap rustled again. 

"Wait, can I just - can I clarify something real quick?" She stuck her head back in. "Do you mean we can't sleep together, as in, that's your gentlemanly way of saying you don't want to bang, or as in I literally can't go to sleep in here?" 

Now, it was his turn to be confused.

"The first one, obviously." 

"Oh." Her shoulders dropped with relief. "Well, that's not what I was talking about. I meant the second one." 

"You want to stay?"

"Yes?" She shifted her weight back and forth. "Is that okay?"

"Of course."

Almost as quickly as she'd arrived, she ducked back out of the tent. This time, she came back with an armful of blankets that she tossed in the corner and laid down on. He moved closer to her, and brought the lantern with him so he could see his book. 

There were many things he liked about Six, but the way she laid in his bed was one of the most notable. Over the past two weeks, he'd been blessed enough to see several variations on the same theme - sometimes, she was laying back and panting, half-naked and spent from whatever frantic exertion they'd just committed against the tangled sheets. Other times, her eyelids were heavy with sleep as she curled her leaden limbs against a rolled-up blanket, a precious and peaceful image that made his heart jump in his chest. 

Tonight was especially wonderful, one of his favorites, perhaps - she was in nothing but a worn shirt that hit the middle of her thighs, stretching out and making herself comfortable in his bed, her hair tied back and messy, propping her chin up on her elbow with the youthful interest of friends talking into the night at a sleepover. No trying, no posturing - just the simple craving for each other's company, as if they needed nothing else in the world.

"How was the rest of your day?" He flipped through the pages, trying to find the spot he'd marked. 

"Good. I helped some of the Dead Horses with the position for their radio beacon. Apparently I can still do math." She leaned up higher on her elbow. "Isn't that weird? I had no idea what I was about to do, but I grabbed a pen and looked at the map and it just...happened."

"Impressive." He gave up and shut his book. "I was never good at math." 

"I'm sure that's not true." She teased. "You're good at everything." 

"Not long division." 

She rolled over onto her stomach and rested her chin on her hand. Her gaze traveled along his body, like her eyes alone could slit the bandages and see right down to his skin. Even though it was just her, it still made him apprehensive.

"Are you in a lot of pain today?" 

He considered brushing her question off, but he supposed she was wondering why he was so downcast, and he didn't want her to think it was her fault. 

"Yes." 

"I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?" 

"You're already doing it."

"Because I'm here, or something?"

He nodded, and she lifted the blanket over her face and let out a groan.

"Stop it. That's so - ugh. That's so sweet. I'm gonna have to go punch something to get a hold of myself."

Despite his discomfort, he nearly smiled. He looked down and tapped his fingers on the cover of his book. 

"I feel the same way, though." Her voice was muffled, and she lifted her head out from under the blanket so he could hear her. "Just so you know, I'm not just trying to get in your pants all the time. I like sleeping near you anyway. I feel safer."

His spirits soared with the feeling of being needed. She so rarely allowed him to take care of her. Before he gave in to his pride completely, he got a hold of his runaway feelings and forced himself to stop reading into her words. She was unusually jumpy today. Of course she would want someone next to her while she slept. _It doesn't have to be me,_ he reminded himself. The vanity returned with an insistent voice:  _but it is._

"Yes. I know."

"Good." She closed her eyes. 

"Goodnight, Six."

He meant to read, but his thoughts wandered as he watched the light flicker on the walls of the tent behind her.

 _Perhaps she could be happy here_. She could do whatever she wanted  - work with the scouts, or hunt, or train the others with firearms. He would do anything in his power to make her as comfortable as possible. If this was what he'd walked all these years to find at the end of his road - quiet nights in Zion, with her sleeping in his tent - then he would know there was truly no justice in this life, only God's mercy.  

He sat in the comfortable silence and tried to think of something he could do or say to compel her to remain longer. Six tossed over to her side, dragging him away from his thoughts. The light fell on her fluttering eyelashes, casting dancing shadows across her face as she moved around underneath the blanket. He asked God to help her sleep peacefully tonight and ease her fears, whatever it was she was afraid of. It was the only thing he could do for her right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> probs gonna drop that next chapter well before next friday because...what is consistency?


	37. XXXVII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for: brief mention of gore

The next night, Six slipped back inside his tent with an armful of clothes and her rifle, and one quiet night became two. Earlier that day, Joshua found all of the unused candle lanterns in the camp and placed them around the tent before lighting them. When Six entered the room, she let out a small gasp.

"Oh. This is so pretty." She turned to him with the light shining in her eyes. "Is there a word for cozy and creepy at the same time? Because you nailed it."

He folded the corner of the page in his book, confused. He thought she would like more light to see by. Most of the time, she liked to get a little work done before she went to sleep, and she often complained about how dim it was. 

"Is that good?"

She laid her rifle and cleaning supplies on the ground and flashed him a reassuring smile.

"In my opinion? Definitely."

Joshua understood what she was getting at, although he wouldn't necessarily use the same words. In the blurred orange candlelight and flowing shadows, even the plain tent was imbued with the sacred. Together, they settled into a silence somehow both comfortable and reverent.

His book laid open on his lap, but of course, his gaze found its way to her. When she tilted her head down to replace the bolt on her rifle, one pitch-black curl tumbled down against the dark brown column of her neck, resplendent in the rich golden glow of the firelight. When he tore his eyes away and pretended to read, she stared at him too, although she clearly thought he didn't notice. 

Life was starting to stabilize back into a routine, but routine was not without its own minor miracles. The people in the camp laughed louder. They were doing things for enjoyment again - singing, playing games, talking for hours into the night with their arms around their spouses, their children slumping in their laps with drooping heads and eyelids.

Small wonders abounded. Earlier today when Joshua helped translate between Six and one of the scouts, she used the pronoun "we" for the entirety of the conversation, and it gave Joshua a tiny thrill to realize she was referring to the two of them. Later, while everyone sat around the fire, she shared her cup of water with him as she listened to the others talk. Her shoulder leaned into his side, their knees pressed together - a small event, unremarkable to anyone else. Wonderful, all the same. 

As she laid her rifle to the side, he decided now was a good time to suggest that she move her things in here. That was their prior arrangement back in the cave, and he was certain she would accept his offer. There was no reason for his chest to feel so tight, like he was peering over the edge of a cliff. He looked up from his book, and their eyes met. She held her palm out to him.

"Let me do yours, while I'm at it."

He leaned forward and placed his pistol in her hand. She bent back over the gun and smoothed the rag over the inscription on the side of the barrel. The corner of her mouth curved up in an adorable attempt at suppressing her smile. The tightness tugged harder at his chest.

"This gun always surprises me. It's so small. Almost…" She spun the pistol around a nimble finger. "Delicate." It was over in the blink of an eye, but he could have watched her for hours. Her hand closed around the grip, and the fond expression returned.

"I wish I'd gotten to shoot this. Remember when you said I could?"

 _And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not._ His eyes fell on the words on his gun, the ones he explained to her on the afternoon she was referring to. The lines and curves of the letters were so familiar. He read them every day for years.  _Nevertheless, the day shall come when you shall comprehend even God._ His mind responded effortlessly. He could have recited it in his sleep.

At last, he allowed himself to return to her statement.  _I wish I had. Past perfect tense._ It indicated a wish that would not be fulfilled; a day that shall not come.

"I remember."

Her finger tapped the outside of the trigger guard on his gun, and he felt like he was plummeting. Every other muscle of her body went still at the same time, except for that finger. Then, she began speaking again, stammering out the beginning of some sentence that didn't matter, because he already knew how it was going to end.

" - and, um. They asked me if I wanted a lift back, so I think I'm going to head out with them when they leave."

He only allowed the silence to sit for a few seconds before he looked back down.

"That's for the best. It will be a safer journey alongside other people." He brushed at some imaginary speck of dust on the sleeve of his shirt.

"Yep. I thought so, too." Her finger still toyed against the guard.

"When are they leaving?" Joshua flipped the next page in his book, then the next one for good measure.

"Tomorrow. I think."

The men from the caravan were only staying two days, then. When they spoke yesterday, the man explicitly stated that they would stay in Zion for a few days. Hatred drummed against his ribs. It was common knowledge that "a few" meant three or more. He didn't know whether that man's sin was ignorance or malice, but he hated him for it anyway.

"Take whatever supplies you need. Your pistol fires nine millimeter bullets, correct?"

"Yeah?" Her eyebrows furrowed.

"We have plenty. You should check the ammunition storage tomorrow."

"Sure." She crossed her legs, sounding more than a little bewildered. "I will."

They didn't speak much after that. She cleaned his gun for a long time, but didn't look up at him anymore. He forced himself to stop staring at her, too. Eventually, she returned his pistol. He was careful not to brush his hand against hers. 

When she laid down, he extinguished every single lantern, pinching the curled black wicks between his fingers until the night fully descended on them. In the darkness, he did something that did not come naturally to him: he sat down and waited. The only movement he made was the slow, steady pressure of his fingers digging into his arms, drawing out a slow, steady ache in his skin to match. Once her breathing indicated she was asleep, he slid his gun into the holster and stood up, trying to move as quietly as possible. The flap of the tent opened and he was outside in the crisp night air.

Usually when he walked by himself, he had a fixed route in mind, but not tonight. For a while, he meandered alongside the stream, staring at a few silvery fish gliding beneath the water. They hadn't spawned yet this year, and there weren't enough of them yet to really enjoy watching them swim in their smooth, coordinated patterns. It wasn't warm enough yet for the insects to be out buzzing, either. The lack of sound irritated him beyond all reason.

Joshua stared at the peaks in the distance, faint against the blue-black sky, and as he so often did when he didn't want to face the present, his mind went to the past.

There were few points in his life that he could not recall with clarity, but the days leading up to his execution was one of them. The days all blended together, ground down to the routine of the guards bringing him water and food and taking it away untouched. He did not know how long he was in the tent waiting. The convulsing mass of hatred thumped in his chest, keeping time only by the movements of his jailers, who answered to him merely a week ago.

There was only one distinct memory from those days, because it unexpectedly broke the routine. He heard footsteps outside the tent. It was the wrong time for guard change. Every single muscle in his body tensed as the tent opened. 

Vulpes nodded to the guards and stepped closer to him. He peered down as if he were examining a particularly hideous spider caught under a jar. A week ago, Joshua would have ripped his eyes out for looking at him like that without a second thought. 

"Well, I almost doubted the messenger I received, but here you are. I suppose this was inevitable. A mad dog is only useful to his master for so long before he needs to be put down."

In that moment, Joshua visualized grabbing his throat and squeezing until his muscles and bone were crumpled down to a pulp.

"You won't speak? Very well. I'm not here for a conversation. I suppose what I had in mind is more similar to a eulogy. I never liked you much, but I do know you, Legate." The word rolled off of his lips with a delicate sneer. "And do you know what I think my favorite part of this is, that everyone else missed? The most humiliating thing, for you?

"You came back." He shook his head, barely able to contain his glee. "Between you and me, anyone with half a brain and an ounce of self-preservation would have fled, but not you. You walked back with your head hung in shame like any obedient dog would. As if we would pardon you for your failure to carry out Caesar's orders." He shook his finger, and a glint appeared in his eyes. "My mistake. Not we. Like I said, I know you. It's always been about him, hasn't it? You thought he would forgive you."

"Fuck you." Joshua spat. The words were so meaningless, so empty. It was the last rage of helplessness, and they both knew it. 

"Not the best display of your vocabulary, but you have until tomorrow to come up with better last words - oh, dear. By the look on your face, I see that no one told you. Now you know. Tomorrow is your last day on Earth. But before I go, let me throw you a bone." Vulpes crossed his arms against his chest. "Your situation is so pathetic that I actually almost feel sorry for you. I saw the - " he opened his hand. "That flicker of hope in your eyes when I walked in. He isn't going to come see you. You ought to know that by now." 

Now, as Joshua stood next to the river, that memory was so vivid and overpowering that he was having a hard time telling where he was right now. For some reason, the things he was feeling intertwined across space and time until that moment was here with him again. His heart was hammering in his chest like he was going to be attacked at any minute. He wanted to hit something, or kill something, but he was the only living soul around right now.

So, he sat down. His breath was coming in gasping waves, so hard that he feared he might pass out. His arms folded across his chest like he could protect the spite coiling there. A wave of indignation at the injustice of it all crashed over him until he was fuming. _I don't deserve this kind of treatment. Not now. Not ever._ The resentment was so powerful that he hardly had space for anything else in his mind. He tried to do anything she ever asked of him. He thought she was happy. She said she was happy. Maybe she lied to appease him. His thoughts were racing now, matching the tempo of his breathing. What couldn't he do for her? What was so wrong with him that he was never enough?

_A lot._

His breath caught in his throat. The fury in his mind rolled back, illuminated by truth. Of course she would move on. That was easy to imagine - easier than anything in the world. Tomorrow, Six might shake off the past few months like nothing more than a hazy dream. In a year, she might look back on all of this with mild distaste, like being with him was some momentary lapse in judgement. Worse still was the possibility that once she was gone, she would no longer think about him at all. 

And as sure as the seasons change, she would replace him with someone better. He pictured her in some other man's arms, telling him that he made her feel safe, or whispering lovely Spanish words, and he was so enraged that he wanted to tear his own heart out of his chest to make it stop hurting.

_I deserve this._

The breath in his throat hitched again, and he put his face in his hands. He never wanted to think about it again, but helplessness always felt like waiting on the edge of a cliff, and shame always tasted like a mouthful of dust in the bottom of a canyon in Arizona. He shut his eyes and dug his fingers into his skin, pressing against the contours of the bones in his face, hoping the pain would make him think straight again.

It couldn't have been more than a few minutes before he lost all doubt about where he was: in Zion, alone, as he would be for the rest of his days. He started weeping.

Tiny, gasping sobs barely choked out of his throat, like ice breaking with a muffled crack. It was no great cathartic wave. The paltry tears only dampened a few spots on the bandages of his hands, like the years had robbed him of the memory of how to cry as a real person would. Even in his sorrow, he felt pathetic and defective and small, dwarfed by the mountains and the sky above him.

He was crying because he was able to hate everyone who ever made him feel this way before, but he could not hate her. She never wronged him. He had only himself to blame. And that, perhaps, was most of all why he was crying - because after decades of the most painful lessons imaginable, he still stupidly clung to his hope that this time, he would be enough.

He stayed next to the river for a while, his body shaking long after the tears ran dry. There was pain everywhere: in his skin, in his chest, pounding in his head. The sound of the rushing water brought his mind to the present, and he knew it was time to get up and walk back. God saw it fit to take this away from him, too. It was not his place to question His wisdom. That truth didn't make the aching go away. He lifted his eyes to the sky above him. The stars glittered like broken fragments of glass, too sharp against the black sky.

As he made his way back to the camp, he decided to fix his bandages and sit back down as if he never left. Of course, God cared little for human intentions. When he entered the tent, Six scrambled up to a sitting position. 

"It's me." He slid his gun out of the holster and placed it on the table.

"Did you go out? Is everything okay?"

He looked her up and down, sitting in his bed, her eyes wide, her hand clutching the blankets. For a second, he wavered on the edge of the precipice. He thought about telling her that in fact, everything was not okay: that if he had it his way, tomorrow she would pack her things up and move in here with him; and in three months he would show her the first wildflowers blooming in the canyon; and in a year, or two, or ten, he would still do anything she asked of him, because he just wanted to be hers.

 _You are a man,_ he told himself.  _Act like it._

He tightened his hand into a fist until it hurt, and he gathered up all of those wishes and buried them. He had no use for them, and she had no use for him anymore.

"It was nothing. Go back to sleep."

She settled back down, and he thought that was the end of it until her voice broke the silence again.

"Can you come here?" 

He froze, mulling over her request. The bandages could wait until tomorrow. He lifted the blankets on his side of the bed. Her hand reached out for him, and he moved closer to her.

"Turn over," she mumbled.

With a heavy heart, he turned away from her, and she pressed her body against his back. Her arm threaded under his and she put her hand on his chest. He felt her body twitch back and forth until she got comfortable. She held him tight, so tight that he almost wanted to check if she was really sleeping, or just pretending. Instead, he focused his attention on the wall in front of him and tried not to count down the hours until they had to get back up.

 

It felt like mere minutes passed before the gray light of the early morning began to invade their sanctuary. The blankets rustled as she stirred next to him.

With her eyes half-open, she packed her things up in silence. Joshua said nothing until he heard the zipper on her bag closing up.

“May I walk you out?”

“Yeah.” She stifled a yawn. "Please."  He picked her bag up and opened the tent for her. They walked along the path to the center of the camp, and she lifted her eyes to the sky above them. The stars were still out, soon to fade away into the morning sunlight. He found the constellation he knew she was looking for.

“Up there to the left.”

Her eyes darted to him.

“How did you know?” 

“They’re your favorites." He shifted the weight of her bag on his shoulder. "You told me."

“Yeah, like once, in passing." Her mouth fell open. "I can’t believe you remember that."

"Of course I do." That night was seared into his mind. He pictured the smile she gave him at the end of their walk that night: eyes turned up, nose crinkled slightly, unrestrained and free. By now, he had learned that it was her real smile. It was how he could tell when she was truly happy. It made him feel like every inch of the world that God laid out, down to the smallest stone, held within it some wonderful possibility if it were only turned over and examined. As long as he lived, he would never forget it.

They arrived at the entrance of the camp, already bustling with the early morning work. The men were dragging their supplies out to the cart. The two of them stopped walking at the same time, and he looked at her face for the last time.  _You knew from the beginning that this was how it would end._  At every opportunity, she told him that someday, she was going to jump back in the middle of God knew what kind of turmoil, all because the world she wanted to create was unfinished. That drive was one of the reasons why he admired her in the first place. She had her own path to walk. 

“Well.” He put his hands in his pockets. "Vaya con Dios." Her eyes lit up with delight like he knew they would, before the smile abruptly left her face.

“No. I didn't tell you this, but that's kind of an overly serious phrase. Ah - wait." She rubbed the side of her forehead. "That's not the important part. Let me start over. I was thinking - well, hoping, I guess..." She nudged a rock with the side of her boot. "That this wouldn’t be that kind of goodbye.”

The statement lay between them for a moment as he turned it over in his mind.

“What kind of goodbye?”

“Uh. The forever kind?” She winced, as if saying it was physically difficult for her. _It's not over. This isn't the end._ His heart started pounding faster as he looked her up and down. Her posture was braced for his refusal.

“Of course.”

Her usually-excellent composure broke, and he saw surprise and joy and sadness bloom on her face all at once, like they'd been hiding there the whole time. The wrinkle between her eyebrows appeared, and she cleared her throat.

"I want you to know that I can't really promise much. I don't know what's going to happen. We might not see each other again."

It was not comforting, but it was the truth. That was enough for him. 

"Be it according to the will of the Lord, but I believe your work is not finished yet. And when you've seen it through, you are welcome here." 

"You mean it?"

“Wherever I am, there will always be a place for you.” 

Six threw her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. He wasn't expecting it, and he stood there for half a heartbeat before he returned her hug, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his lips to her temple. As if the world had stopped, he took a moment to memorize how her body felt against his: her chest pressed to him, her head leaned into his shoulder, her hands on his back. It hurt. He never wanted it to end. 

She leaned back, and they slowly separated from each other. For just a moment, as she tilted her head up and met his eyes, she looked lost. It passed, and she yanked her hand off of his chest like she suddenly remembered what she was supposed to be doing. The flash of self-consciousness on her face was so unguarded and sweet that he had to restrain himself from gathering her up in his arms again. 

"See you later, Joshua." 

All of the other painful separations in his life flashed before his eyes. He still could not prevent that, but even in his misery, even though she was leaving, he knew this time there was something to hang his inextinguishable hope on. When he looked at her, he saw a mirror image: hope of her own, reflected back at him.

“Goodbye, Six.”


	38. XXXVIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for: lots of mentions of alcohol & binge drinking. Mention & description of vomiting.

The light was overwhelming - blinding white, consuming everything else in her field of vision. Six tried not to flinch away as it roved steadily from left to right. White gave way to a dull red, illuminating a hidden pattern of thin branches - _those are my veins,_ she thought, with a mild curiosity.

"Eyes still look sharp." The light went away. "Stick your tongue out."

Six did as he asked, and Doc Mitchell peered down her throat. She blinked, trying to get the spots mottling the room to go away. She stared at the bookshelf across the room as her vision cleared up. A thick book bound in soft black leather leaned against the top shelf. Her eyes darted away from it. Fortunately, Doc Mitchell spoke again, providing a better distraction.

"You got any of your memories back?" He ducked lower and lifted the light. She kept her tongue out as best she could.

"Nope."

The light clicked off, and his shoulders slumped down. He lifted the file on the table next to them. The skin on the back of his hand looked even more wrinkled and translucent with age than the first time they did this. 

"Well, it's been about a year since I last saw you." His eyes lowered to the papers. "A year this month, to be specific." He peered up at her over his glasses. "You gotten hit in the head since then? Any bad falls? Concussions?" He said it like he already knew the answer, so she might as well fess up anyway.

"Probably. Yeah."

He leaned back in his seat and cleared his throat.

"Listen, I been hearing about you on the radio, and I don't know exactly what it is you do, but whatever it is, you ought to quit." He flipped through her file. "I'll be frank. You scored worse on your cognitive assessments than last year." He closed the folder, and met her eyes. "Repeated head trauma adds up'n gets worse over time. You could end up with some serious problems. Motor issues. Mood swings. Seizures, especially."

"I understand."

"I don't know if you do." He leaned forward. "Them gunshots didn't kill you. Maybe that makes you feel invincible. But you're more at risk now. One bad bump on the head, and you might stay in the ground for good. So, if I were you, I'd find a nice little desk job and settle down." He tossed the folder to the side. "That's my advice, anyway. I suppose it's up to you to take it or not. Is there anything else you wanted to ask about?"

"No."

"Well, Courier Six." He sighed, and his watery blue eyes returned to her. "That's all I have. I hope I see you again."

Six shouldered open the wooden door, juggling her rifle, hat, and shawl in her arms all at once. Boone stood up from the chair on the porch.

"Well?"

She smiled at him and lifted the hat onto her head.

"All good. Clean bill of health." She scuffed her boot on the wooden slats of the porch. "So, as much as I'd like to hang around here, I have a meeting in Vegas on Saturday." The barely-noticeable way he tipped his head toward her almost made her laugh. He knew she hated meetings. She looked around the brown hills and thought about the miles of vicious animals and angry armed gangs waiting for them between here and the Strip. "Remember when it used to be like this all the time?" She put her hands on her hips. "Just you, me, our rifles, a couple of deathclaws here and there?"

"Could do without the deathclaws." He pushed his sunglasses up. "The rest was fine."

"I'd take 'em over the assholes on the Strip any day."

"Fair."

Six bounded down the steps of the porch, with Boone following behind her. The sun was starting to fall lower in the sky, and she tipped her hat back so she could feel the heat on her face. The weather was still mild enough that it was pleasurable - not yet the grueling sear of summertime. After allowing herself a moment to enjoy the sunset, she fished a cigarette out of her shirt pocket and lit it as they set off on the dusty road. After running herself ragged around Vegas for the past four months, this was a nice change of pace.

They followed it out of town, past the saloon and the wooden slat houses with their peeling paint and crumbling beams. Six knew it was coming, but when they passed the hill with the water tower, she still felt her heart start pounding in her chest. A morbid impulse overcame her, the desire to look overpowering her fear. She looked up toward the water tower.

"Do you mind if we go up here for a minute?"

He lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. They trudged up the side of the hill, and Six walked past the wooden slats. They made it to the far side of the cemetery, and to her fascination, her grave was still open. No one had bothered to fill it in. She stepped to the side of the grave and stared into it, bracing herself for a confusing mixture of emotions. Terror. Anger. Triumph, maybe.

She was staring at a hole in the ground. It was completely underwhelming. She could even picture what it must have been like for the people digging it almost a year ago. The people in her mental image were no ominous, shadowy monsters - just a bunch of average men, sweating and complaining. Imagining Benny removing shovelfuls of dirt for an hour in his ridiculous suit was almost funny. She wondered if they made her sit there and watch while they dug it. Whoever she was before must have been feeling a strange mixture of mortal fear and boredom.

Six closed her hand around the lighter in her pocket and flipped it back and forth. It was Benny's lighter. She rarely left the Lucky 38 without it now. His lighter. His gun. His plans. This was supposed to be him standing here right now. The wind blew her cigarette out, and she watched the orange embers curl into black ash.

"One year down. Let's see if we get through the next one." 

That almost made Boone smile. The wind started hitting them hard from the side, and she figured it was time to move on. She wrapped the shawl over her mouth and nose and flicked the cigarette butt into the grave.

 

 

"Finally." Raul barely glanced up from his plate when Six entered the room, and she didn't blame him. His dinner tonight looked and smelled delicious, as always. "I thought you were going to Red Rock Canyon. Did you two decide to do some sightseeing instead?"

"Maybe we did. But the Khans are dealt with, thank you very much." Six took her gloves off and threw them on the table. Boone stood next to her and folded his arms. She didn't even need to ask him to avoid mentioning their detour to Goodsprings. He already knew it wasn't something she wanted to share.

"This one has been driving me crazy." Raul jerked his thumb at ED-E. "Buzzing around and beeping all day. I think he missed you deadbeats."

"Did you have fun while I was gone?" She patted the robot on the top of his casing, and he hovered higher into her hand. "Oh, the Followers took all of your stickers off."

He gave a sad little beep.

"It's okay. We'll find new ones. How did the upgrade go?"

He shook back and forth with what looked like triumph.

"Good to hear. I missed you so much."

"Did I just hear you have an emotion?" Arcade breezed in and tossed a stack of papers on the table. "Are you feeling all right? Running a fever, maybe?"

"Hilarious and observant. You really are the total package." Six took one of the tortilla pieces off of Raul's plate, making sure to scoop up some of the egg. "How are things going in Freeside?"

"Calm enough. The Kings have been holding it down. But I think you and I should - "

"Talk about the vaccines?"

"Tomorrow. I'm going to - "

"Bring it up with Julie?"

"Exactly. I'm on my way over to the Mormon Fort right now."

Her lungs felt heavier in her chest. Six abruptly looked away from him and nabbed another bite off of Raul's plate. He shot her a glare, but she ignored him as she leaned back against the table and tried to focus on business. The Followers had been exceptionally good partners so far. Right now, they were working on a plan to on distribute vaccines and medicine to the new arrivals in Freeside. The number of displaced people trickling into New Vegas was only increasing as the Legion advanced on the Dam.

"Say hey to everyone for me. We'll get together tomorrow and compare notes."

"Have a good night. You definitely deserve a break." Arcade picked his papers up from the table, and clicked the end of his pen a few times. "Seriously, Six. I'm impressed. You've been on a roll lately. I'm starting to think we might actually pull this off." 

Six mustered up a smile. 

"Thanks. That means a lot coming from you." 

Six watched as Arcade disappeared around the doorway. If there was anyone she couldn't do this without, it was him. This entire undertaking was as much his project as it was hers. Every step of the way, he was there, helping her plan moves and make difficult decisions, and he curbed her pragmatic impulses in a good way. He was never afraid to speak up and challenge her when they had an ethical disagreement, and that was exactly why she asked for his help. 

With Arcade gone, the room suddenly felt much quieter.  _Veronica must have taken off already._ Her eyes fell on Raul as he spread an old paperback open on the table. 

"You need something, boss?" He flicked to the next page without looking up at her.

"No." She looked away and tapped her fingers on the counter. "Are you gonna be here over the weekend?"

He snorted.

"Are you kidding? This place has unlimited hot water. I'm not going anywhere."

"Okay." She straightened up, feeling a little more fortified. "See you around, then, maybe."

"If you're leaving for the night, take your robot with you." To her delight, he gestured to the stove. "And sit down and eat before you go. I made too much food. Just use a fork, at least." 

 

 

Later that night, as Six lay back against the rough cotton sheets, she couldn't help but think that all things considered, she should have just stayed in and gotten some extra work done. Earlier, she considered paying a visit to the Thorn. Red Lucy was always willing to grab a drink and slide into a corner booth to catch up, and probably more than willing to slide into bed together again, too, but Six wanted to go somewhere no one would recognize her, and she was a familiar face in Westside. Now, she was regretting just about every single decision she'd made that night. She went to three different bars on the outskirts of Freeside, downing drink after drink, scouring the dim and crowded rooms for the meanest-looking drifters or guards. It was all in vain. Despite her best effort, not one person would take a swing at her.

At the third dive, she gave a last-ditch attempt at elbowing the bouncer who shoved her out the door.

"What's the matter with you, lady?" He pushed her into the alleyway. "Shit. Go home."

Normally, she could at least get in one good fight if she tried. The residents of Freeside were never reluctant to punch a drunk asshole in the face. _Just an off night,_ she thought, staring at the cracking ceiling of the motel room.

The casino lights blinked through the window, casting muted reds and greens and yellows against the off-white sheets. Six focused on one specific thread in the fabric. It was a little pulled out and frayed on one side. The lights shifted and changed, but her eyes didn't move from that thread. She used to like the neon lights. They felt new and different and exciting. Now, she resented them for blocking out the stars. The night sky here was always hazy and indistinct.

With a little effort, she shoved that thought down and leaned up to tap the guy on the shoulder. She picked him up at the fourth bar, and she couldn't quite remember his name - something that started with a T, maybe. It was noisy when he told her. He'd only been fingering her for less than a minute, but she wasn't paying attention, and he started doing some weird thing with his thumb that just felt uncomfortable. It all happened like she was watching herself through some outside observer's eyes, and she was overwhelmed with a sudden desire to go home. 

"Hey." She tapped him again. "You can stop. It's fine."

The man looked up at her, clearly miffed at her interruption.

"What? Am I doing something wrong?"

It wasn't really his fault. She was a little too drunk to feel anything, and she was too distracted to focus on what was going on. All the same, bitterness surged through her. She stared at his eminently forgettable face, drawn up in annoyance at her. 

"You're definitely not doing anything right." She made her voice as cruel and cutting as she could manage, and to her satisfaction, it worked. His mouth opened slightly in shock, and finally, he found his words.

"You're a real bitch, you know that?"

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and began to button up her shirt. 

"You're not even hot."

Six stifled a laugh behind her hand as she stood and yanked her pants up. That struck her as the funniest thing she'd heard all day, but it seemed to make him even angrier. He picked up a glass from his nightstand, and for a second, she hoped he was about to throw it at her. She visualized it hitting the wall behind her, shattering into a hundred pieces. Instead, he simply scoffed in disgust.

"Get out of here."

"Can I use your bathroom?" She couldn't help it, but she giggled again.

"Bitch. Get out."

Six left the room and staggered down the hallway, squinting against the lights. She knew there was one last step at the bottom of the stairs, but she missed it and landed on her ankle anyway. The sting rolled over her, surprisingly sharp, and she caught herself on the wall before she fell. Despite the numbed haze she was in, her teeth still gritted in pain. It might be sprained. It was impossible to tell right now.

She deliberately took the worst alleyways home, going the long way around. Her hand flipped the lighter open and closed in her pocket. Tonight was quiet. Most of the revelers had gone home long ago. The only people out were slumped against walls, close to passing out from whatever they were on.

As she turned the corner down a dimly lit back street, her stomach rolled, and she limped to the side of the alleyway and clutched onto a trash can. The metal rim was hard against her fingers, and she leaned over and let the saliva drip from her mouth.

_Don't. Don't. Don't._

Her hands closed into fists. The air hit her lungs, cloying and smoky. It was incredible how different places had a certain smell, and she could never describe it in words, but she knew it as soon as she breathed in.

"You good, baby doll?"

She spat again and closed her eyes, hoping that the world would stop spinning around her.

"Yes." She rested her weight on the trashcan and touched her forehead to her wrists.

"If you say so."

Even though her brain was sliding around her head, she knew this was a good thing. The Kings were out tonight. She'd made an agreement with them to act as a city watch for this side of town, and it looked like they were holding up their end of the bargain.  _I'm technically his boss._ She would have laughed at the ridiculousness of that if she hadn't been afraid she'd throw up in front of him. She cracked her eyes open, and was met with nothing but the dark bottom of the garbage can.

 _This is what you_ _wanted._ Tears sprang into her eyes, but she forced herself to ignore the penny taste in the back of her throat. Deep breaths, in her nose, out her mouth. _I can make it home,_ she told herself. _I will make it home._

The front door to the Lucky 38 closed behind her quietly. Six asked Yes Man to stop greeting her when she dragged in past midnight. It got embarrassing after about the fourth time in a row. She took a few hesitant steps into the room, adorned with plush carpet and lacquered wood. To her, it always seemed too stuffy. It was nothing she would have ever picked out for herself. _It's not mine, it's House's,_ she reminded herself. His tower. His army. His plans. She was nothing more than a patchwork ghost, her entire life cobbled together from things left behind by the dead. 

At least when she took House out, she knew better than to make it messy this time. She just hit a few buttons on the terminal and let nature take its course. It was nothing that would give her nightmares. Her quiet coup was sort of unbelievable, when she thought about it: one of the most significant power shifts in the wasteland accomplished with nothing more than yanking the right plug. After months of turning over the idea in her mind and letting the tensions back in the Mojave simmer, the Strip was hers in less than fifteen minutes. One calculated, deadly strike at the right opportunity was all it took. Scoping out the right place and right time could work wonders. 

No one except Arcade and Yes Man knew what she'd done. Everyone else saw how House invited her in and assumed she was his chosen successor. She didn't start that misconception, but she was more than happy to let it stay. As combative and independent as the factions around New Vegas could be, they'd at least deferred to her leadership somewhat, although they balked at taking orders from her. Running the city was more like herding a bunch of cats than anything else, if the cats were argumentative and armed to the teeth.

She contemplated passing out on one of the ugly velvet armchairs on the casino floor, but she commanded herself to make it up to her room. Her stomach turned again when she got in the elevator, but she clenched her fist and took deep breaths as she stared into her own eyes in the mirrored doors. The harsh fluorescent lighting made the bags under her eyes more pronounced.

When she stepped onto the twenty-second floor, she noticed the light was still on in the kitchen. In irritation, she shuffled down the hall. She was always griping at people to turn the lights off when they left the rooms, but some of them didn't listen.

For once, she was actually startled. Someone was sitting at the table in the kitchen. Her hand hovered over her pistol, but the slope of the shoulders was familiar, and she relaxed.

"Boone? What are you doing up?" She rubbed her eyes and leaned against the doorway. He hated it when she walked up behind him like that, but he didn't say anything. With unnaturally quick movements, he folded something up and stuffed it in his pocket before she could see what it was.

"Nothing."

Her eyes fell on the empty bottles of beer next to him, and she had a feeling that it definitely wasn't nothing. His eyebrows raised, and he looked away.

"Uh...your shirt."

She looked down and noticed in her haste, she'd skipped a couple of buttons on her chest, and quickly fixed them up. With a heavy sigh, she tilted her head against the doorway.

"Bad night?" He cleared his throat, still staring at the wall.

"Yeah."

"Beer?" He looked up at her out of the corner of his eye and pointed toward the case.

"I want…" She looked around, and the room wobbled. "Water."

Without saying anything, he filled up a glass from the sink and brought it to the table in front of her. It was way too nice of him, and she wanted to thank him, but she knew he'd just give her a glance like it was no big deal. They settled down at the table in silence. Her eyes traveled over the brown glass bottles on the table. It looked like he'd been through nearly two six-packs.

"Have you been here alone all night?"

"Yeah." He didn't look up at her.

"We should just drink sadly together next time." She kicked her foot up on the chair next to her.

"I'm not sad." He leaned back. 

"Then neither am I."

The glance he gave her communicated his thoughts well enough. _Point taken._

"Actually, you know what?" She stood up. "I'm tired of being inside. I'm always inside these days. Fuck that."

"Not much to see on the street." He lifted the bottle to his lips.

"Not the street." She picked up the remnants of the six-pack. "Roof. Let's go. "

Her ankle smarted when she climbed out of the window, but she ignored it long enough to scramble onto the flat part of the roof. A few pitiful stars shone overhead in the black sky, drowned out by the lights of the casinos.

"This is tall," Boone remarked, with his typical flat understatement that always had a way of amusing her. Six was pretty sure it was the tallest building in the entire Mojave. It was certainly the tallest thing she'd ever seen. Someone with a fear of heights would absolutely hate it up here. She popped the top off another beer, as if she could force her brain to stop launching these thoughts at her.

"Salud." She clinked her bottle against his, and they drank.

They sat looking out at the city, and Six thought that there was something appealing in being not-sad together. In a way, he was comforting to be around. She didn't have to explain every damn thing to him. 

"It's good you came back." He rested his arms on the tops of his knees. It didn't even disturb Six that he was clearly thinking the same thing as her. By now, she was used to it. They always just sort of got each other without having to talk about it.

"For a while, I thought you weren't going to."

With a rush of dismay, she realized she was wrong, and he wasn't talking about tonight. He meant before, when she left the Mojave after dealing with Benny. 

"I kept thinking, what if something happened to you and I wasn't there. Sort of drove myself up the wall, to be honest. I should have gone with you."

 _He's shitfaced._ There was no way he'd ever be that forthcoming without a near-lethal amount of alcohol in his blood.

"I appreciate it." She almost touched his shoulder, but she held herself back. The world wobbled around her. "And I'm really sorry that I made you worry. But hey, I don't want you to ever bother yourself over me, okay? I chose this. If something happens, it's not your fault."

"Yeah, but you - I mean. Sometimes I ask myself why I'm still here. Must be for some reason. And when you walked into Novac last year - uh. I don't know. I think that's part of it. Like we were always supposed to meet each other. Like I have something left to do, an' maybe something to give a damn about again." He looked down. "But maybe that's dumb."

"It's not dumb." Her voice was soft, and she tried to sound reassuring. She couldn't say she agreed with him, because none of this was supposed to have happened, but that was the way he saw the world, and she wasn't going to tell him he was wrong. 

For a few moments, they were both quiet, and Six thought the conversation was over until Boone reached into his pocket and took something out. It was white, folded up, papery. He handed it to her, and she saw that it was a photograph of a woman with braided hair and dark eyes and a brilliant smile. She was in a kitchen with her hands in a mixing bowl, looking up and laughing like she'd been caught off guard by whoever took the photo. _Fuck. That must be Carla._   

"She's really beautiful." Six tilted the photograph so it caught the light. Boone nodded.

"She was good, too."

Boone took another drink and looked out at the sky.

"There are some people that are just one-of-a-kind. You know? Different."

"Yeah." She fixed her eyes on the three stars directly above her head. They were weak and blurry, but still barely bright enough that she could find them even in this pitiful excuse of a night sky. "I know."

"It feels bad."

She looked at him, and this time, the simplicity of his words didn't make her laugh. It was too heavy. _It feels bad._ Hearing him say it so plainly made it impossible to run away from the brutal reality.

"I'm so sorry."

He just nodded and looked away, unable to say anything. The grief was too strong. They simply had to wait for it to pass. When it did, he took another swig from his bottle and looked out at the city.

"Sometimes, I think you're the only person who gets it. You actually listen. Sort of like a brother to me, almost." He frowned. "Uh. Sister. Anyway. Thanks for letting me talk."

"No need to thank me." She bumped the back of her wrist against his. "You're a great person. Being your friend is easy." 

The relief only lasted for a second before it dissolved into pure, unadulterated self-hatred. She did not deserve an ounce of his concern. _You made your own problems. You will carry them alone._ They finished their drinks in a companionable silence. Boone had no idea what was on her mind, and as grateful as she was for that, she felt hollow. Six knew she was going to throw up now, but she hoped she could at least wait until she was alone in her room. 

They climbed back inside through the window. Boone refilled her glass with water before she could stop him, and gave her a tiny nod. 

"Goodnight."

 

 

Somewhere along the way, Six lost her shoes by the time she got to her room. Resolving to look for them tomorrow, she turned on the lamps and sat down on the bed. The embroidered comforters were too fluffy and scratchy. Although she'd been sleeping in this bed for nearly three months, it still didn't feel like it was really hers. Her tools were still on the bed from last night: sheets of paper, pens, a dictionary. Stretching out on her stomach, she pressed her pen to the blank page in front of her, biting her tongue in concentration, too focused on her task to realistically asses her ability to actually complete it right now. Slow, shaky lines appeared on the paper.

_Hey, Joshua._

She ripped that page off and placed it to the side. She tried a few more variations of greeting - _Hello. Hi. Dear -_ She would have used that one, but she didn't want to write his name out again. She just skipped the greeting and started writing, like she always ended up doing.

_This feels bad. I miss you._

She ripped the page out and crumpled it up and threw it across the room.

Her head fell on the page as she sprawled out flat. During the day, she tried not to even think his name. The word itself felt like an open wound. When she was alone at night, all she did was try to write him letters, and that was like jamming her fingers in and making it worse. She'd sent him plenty of messages, but she never got a reply. He probably had a million other things to think about that weren't her, but she thought he would at least send her some kind of response. With each passing week, she grew more and more discouraged. Maybe it was naive to think that he genuinely wanted to see her again. He might have changed his mind, or never really meant it in the first place. Maybe it was time for her to move on.

That's what she always did, but this time, she was stuck. It was entirely unlike anything else she'd ever experienced. It felt like every single inch of skin on her body that he'd ever touched was never going to rid itself of the memory, like he'd gotten all the way down into her bones. It felt like someone stuck a knife in her chest, deep in between her ribs, all the way through her muscles and lungs, and she was walking around every day bleeding out of a gaping hole that was invisible to everyone else.

Then, she allowed herself the rare indulgence of combing over her fragile memories, begging herself not to forget what he was like. Thoughtful in a hundred small ways; impulsive in a few big ones. Serious, to a fault. Sort of funny, when he wanted to be. Hands-down, the most terrifying and stubborn person she'd ever met; hands-down, the only person who ever looked at her and made her feel like she was truly being seen. She could sit around all night and come up with words to describe him, and together, they would never come close to capturing what it was like to be in the same room with him for thirty seconds. Despite everything, she couldn't even talk herself out of her feelings like she usually could. If there was anyone in the world worth being upset over, it was him.

 _This is what you wanted._  But this wasn't what it was supposed to feel like. It was supposed to be an uphill climb - hard, strenuous, but little by little, she'd rise up and eventually reach the top. This was nothing of the sort. In these moments, when her advisers and her allies and her foes were all gone, and she was alone, it was like she was adrift in expansive waters, so still and calm that she almost didn't notice that there was no land in sight. She could only tread water for so long. Eventually, she would have to stop, and then, there was nothing for her to do but drown.

She lifted herself up off of her stomach and tossed the dictionary onto the nightstand, then the blank papers, then the ones she'd written on. At some point that night, she did throw up, but she didn't know when, or what she was thinking about when it happened. After she put her pen down, she kind of blacked out. 


	39. XXXIX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> early post because I'll be on holiday for the rest of the week :^)

Joshua turned the page in his book, pleasantly distracted by the hum of conversation around him. It was a warm evening, and many of the Sorrows had walked over to the Dead Horses camp to visit for a few days. The children were running around, laughing and screaming, and the adults sat near the fire, watching them and talking. Since the White Legs were driven out, the transformation had been astounding. People felt safe enough to leave their camps again, and slowly but surely, their lives were all moving forward. _This is living_ , he thought. They were no longer forced to cower in the caves and pray that each day might not be their last.

Joshua turned his head to the camp entrance and saw a group of travelers approaching. Daniel was with them, speaking with one of the men. He waved when he saw Joshua.

"Hello. We had a caravan come by, but I told them they'd find most everyone here. Thought I'd accompany them myself, since the weather is so nice." Joshua closed his book and rose to his feet.

"Welcome to Zion. Make yourselves at home." The men thanked him and split up to take care of their animals and unpack their gear. Daniel removed his hat and ran his hand through his hair as they watched the group disperse. At first, he was hesitant about opening up Zion to caravans and travelers. The two of them had their disagreements in anger, but this was not one of them. Joshua understood his concerns, and shared many of them himself. However, they came to the conclusion that they could make contact with other places and still stay righteous. _In the world, but not of it,_ he told himself.

Plus, it wasn't entirely their decision anymore. Now that the war was over, much of the weight of leadership was officially lifted from his shoulders. His duties mainly consisted of stockpiling equipment and training people how to shoot, which these days meant taking a couple of BB guns up in the hills and showing the older children how to hit soda bottles. It was completely unexciting, but he found relief in it, and he couldn't say that about much in his life.

A couple of months ago, Waking Cloud suggested that he get some of the children and adults together and help them with learning English in the evenings. He felt a flicker of enthusiasm before he considered it rationally, and his mood dampened. 

"I can't." He looked down at his hands. "It's a good idea. But I can't help." 

She seemed disappointed, but hadn't brought it up since then. It was for the best. For some reason, it left a bad taste in his mouth. Someone other than him would be much better suited to teaching them. 

Now, when he wasn't working, he spent most of his time alone. Quite often, he reflected on the fact that this was how the remainder of his physical life would pass - walking in the canyon and watching the flowers bloom, reading the books he scavenged, folding his hands at night and praying. It was fine. Lonely, at times, but fine. God's providence had given him a far better lot than he deserved.  

He looked back at Daniel, who seemed to have been similarly lost in thought. They shared their contentment as they surveyed the merchants fanning out among the people. A scrawny young man had a brown satchel on his back. _Mojave Express._ The canyon must be receiving mail now. Plenty of it was probably junk fliers for casinos or saloons, but it was a milestone nonetheless.

"Joshua, look." Follows-Chalk rushed up to him, waving a piece of paper. "It's from Six." He pointed to the name scrawled on the front of the envelope. Joshua's breath caught in his throat. _She's alive._

"That's good news." The words were strangled, but Follows-Chalk didn't seem to notice. He ripped the letter out of the envelope, and his eyes skimmed over the page rapidly.

"She says - she says she's back in New Vegas, and she wants me to come visit her once the war is over." A huge grin spread across his face as he looked up. "I wonder if the Strip is as great as everyone says." He folded the letter back into the envelope and tucked it against his chest.

 _More like a bastion of sin,_ he thought, sullen, but something about Follows-Chalk's starry-eyed excitement made him keep it to himself.

"You should visit her. It's good to see the world when you're young." He cast a glance over his shoulder at the mailman, who was still passing out parcels and letters. He handed one to Waking Cloud, who lifted her daughter into her lap so she could see her open the envelope. That one, too, was undoubtedly from Six.

The mailman put away the bag, apparently finished with his rounds, and Joshua couldn't fight his shock. _Oh._ The word felt like a splash of freezing water to the face. Joshua sat back down and opened his book again, staring at the words without reading them. _Presumptuous as usual._

Laughter and conversation swirled around him, but he wasn't really hearing it. His finger ran over a crease on the corner of a page, and he wondered what Six was doing right now, and where she had been. Each night, when he prayed, her name found its way into his mouth. He thought about her often. All of the pain he felt at her departure folded up into a quiet sadness that he carried around with him every day. When it ached, he allowed the feeling to wash over him, then put it away and continued on. It was nothing he couldn't bear. Six did not take anything from him, and after all of the loss in his life, he knew how much worse it could feel than this. 

Most of the time, reminders of her brought him more happiness than sorrow. They were often small and unexpected: the smell of coffee on the campfire, or seeing a smooth stone by the river that she would have liked, or finding a sock she'd forgotten to pack. Whenever he missed her smile or her laugh or the sound of her breathing next to him at night, he thought about the good memories they had together. 

There were some painful nights, mostly when gave into his fear for her safety. One thought that always troubled him was that he might never know for certain how or when she died. No one would think to send him any word, and he didn't know anyone close to her that he could ask. 

The only way he kept up with her was from the reports of people passing through Zion. For once, he listened carefully to every piece of gossip and news, scouring the stories for any clues. She was a popular topic of conversation. He heard multiple reports that Six had somehow assumed House's place and found herself in some kind of leadership over the city of New Vegas, which seemed almost too unbelievable to be true. Fact and fiction easily became muddled and distorted one hundred miles away. At this point, he'd even heard two different rumors of her death, and he had to tell himself not to believe them. 

 _But I know she's back now_ , he told himself. _She's alive. There's nothing to worry about._

It didn't work. That wasn't the only reason he wanted to hear from her. He assumed she would make the effort to send him something, anything, even if it were no more personal than simply informing him that she was alive. He was in the middle of castigating himself for his expectations when he noticed Waking Cloud walking up to him, the mailman trailing behind her.

"Hello." Her tone was light, her mouth creased in amusement. "This man says he has some letters with no names. I said he could leave them with you to sort out." Joshua sat up and closed his book.

"Yes. That will be fine."

The boy lifted a huge stack of envelopes bound together with twine out of of a separate bag. They fell on the table in front of him with a thud. Joshua looked back to Waking Cloud, who gave him a reproachful smile.

"Cheer up."

"I wasn't -"

"Of course not." She waved her hand. "Well, I will leave you to it. It looks like you have some reading to do."

Joshua looked down at the bundle in front of him. That tight feeling in his chest returned. It had become less familiar since she left. The one on top had nothing written on the address line but _Zion Canyon_ in a spidery and uneven hand. He unlaced the twine and spread all of the letters out on the table in front of him. He pulled his knife out of his pocket and carefully slit the first letter open.

He counted all fifteen of them out and arranged them chronologically. The sun eventually dropped into the horizon and disappeared, but he read them one after the other, only pausing to go find a lantern when it became too dark to see. The first one was dated a week after she left Zion, and it appeared she'd written at least once a week since then. The way she composed them was clever: there were no identifying details about either of them, only veiled references that she knew he would understand. She must be worried about someone intercepting them and using the contents against her, or him, or both.

He ran his fingers over the page, and pictured Six hunched over it, eyebrows furrowed as she focused on writing the lines. It must have taken her a great deal of time and effort, but she did it for him anyway. After being apart for months, she still thought about him. He found himself rereading entire paragraphs just to prolong his enjoyment of her words. Each letter was at least two pages long, but the last one was shorter.

 

 _I hope you know I'm the dumbest person alive._   _I've been trying to send these to Zion, and then last week they all got returned. It was only then when I realized: THERE IS NO MAIL SERVICE TO ZION. This whole time, I thought for sure you were ignoring me. It felt bad._

_Anyway, I had a route set up. I'm sure you'll all get a lot of use out of it, no need to thank me, etc. Also, please excuse my handwriting. It's only getting worse. I hope everyone is doing well. Mostly you, though. I hope you're doing well._

_I miss you._

 

There were no sign offs or greetings. That was how every single letter ended: _I miss you._ The thoughts buzzed around his head, too fast to sort out. He picked up a piece of paper and his pen started moving nearly of its own accord. With the first letter open in front of him, he wrote a reply. He would have liked to take his time to plan out what to say to her, but the words rushed out in a torrent. After that, he wrote a reply to the second one, and the third one, and the fourth, until he had fifteen responses spread out in front of him, plus one extra letter. Joshua found the mailman, who was already eating dinner at one of the tables.

"Stamps." He held his hand out. The boy jumped, then scrambled to put his spoon down.

"Uh, yessir. How many?"

"Sixteen."

"Are you sure? That's - "

"Sixteen."

He sighed and removed the stamps from his bag. Joshua paid him and affixed a stamp to each envelope, then laid them on the table.

"Wait, mister. You forgot to address these, too."

He gathered them up and spread them on the table, pausing with his pen in hand.

"What's the name of the largest tower in New Vegas?"

"The Lucky 38?"

Joshua scribbled that on the front of each envelope and returned them to the mail carrier. The boy gave him an inquisitive glance, his fear forgotten.

"They're all going to the Lucky 38? Would one not get the job done?"

"No."

"Are you somebody important or something?"

"No."

Once he made sure that the mailman deposited each envelope in his bag, he turned around and went to his tent, still in a daze. He tucked her letters away in the pages of his Scripture. He folded up the last one and slid it into his shirt pocket. Just having it on his body made him feel better, like a physical reminder that it was all real. His mind was still swimming when he joined the rest of the group near the fire. The caravan workers were talking among themselves, loud enough for him to hear. 

"Well, it looks like shit's about to hit the fan. I hope our new mayor is ready for it." The woman scoffed and stretched her legs out in front of her. "Sometimes I wonder what he does in that tower all day. Just waiting to see which way the wind blows, I guess." 

"Sick bastard." The guard next to her shook his head. "He hung a bunch of guys in North Vegas for no damn reason other than that he woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, or something. I know a guy that saw it. The fella ain't quite right, if you ask me. I heard he came out of that grave with no soul."

"I got no problems with him. My brother's stationed at McCarran. He said he sees him coming to meet with the brass all the time. That's more than you can say for old Mr. House." 

"For the last time, you idiots." The oldest man tilted his hat back. "She's a girl."

"No, my brother said - "

"Your brother knows shit." He leaned forward and put a hand on his chest. "I actually met her once in a bar in Westside. Told her I was having problems with the generators in my neighborhood, and she wrote down the location on a napkin so she wouldn't forget. They got the power back up within a week."

"Either way, the courier's a bloodthirsty sonofabitch. Last person on Earth I'd ever want to cross."

"Listen to you all. Scared to death of a nice young lady. She's harmless." 

 _They're all wrong._  Joshua stared at the fire. None of their descriptions of her even came close to what he knew. Silently, he held onto the truth, made more precious because it belonged to him alone. 

"Honestly, I feel sort of sorry for her." The older man scratched his ear and ventured forth with a sheepish chuckle. "If they take the dam, the Legion's gonna eat her alive."

 _They're wrong._  This time, when the thought flashed through his mind, instead of an assertion, it was a frantic plea, a prayer of helplessness against that which he could not know. A sick feeling rolled over him, and he thought of another time, when he was living another life. The first time he prepared for this battle, his mind was consumed with the sheer magnitude of it all: thousands of guns and bullets and red banners, thousands of faceless men marching in vast swarms, smashing against each other like tides breaking upon rocks.

Now, his concept of it all was painfully small, his thoughts centered around only two people. This time around, those two were both far away from him, lining up their armies to murder one other as if nothing had changed since the first battle. _Everything has changed,_ he protested, and for her sake, he begged that God was listening, because this time, he had no control over which one of them would win. 


	40. XL

"Courier Six? You received some mail. I didn't know you had so many other friends!" Yes Man's voice came over the intercom in the kitchen. Six leaned over and mashed the button on the speaker. 

"I'll deal with it later. I'm about to go to a meeting."

"How could I forget? It's your last tribe! Aside from the Brotherhood of Steel, of course, if you ever decide what you want to do with them." 

"I'm still thinking." 

"Of course you are! You are just the best at thinking. You spend so much time doing it! Especially considering that you still have to activate the army in the bunk-" 

"Ah, sorry." Six spoke over him in a rush, and made a noise with her mouth that sounded like a radio hiss. "I can't hear you. You're breaking up. We'll talk later when I get back. Love you."

"Whatever you say! Bye! I love you too!" 

Six released the button and glanced at Veronica, who was leaning over the table and doodling absently on a napkin. The Brotherhood of Steel was one of Six's more confounding problems. Yes Man wanted their blood, and Six was inclined to agree, if only to avoid the potential threat they posed, but Veronica sort of threw a wrench in things. She was adamant that the Brotherhood could improve themselves. Six wasn't so sure, but for now, she was stalling until she came up with a solution. 

"You guys are a cute couple. I guess there really is someone for everyone." Veronica tapped her fingers on her glass and arched an eyebrow. "Anyway, are you wearing that to your meeting?"

Six looked down at her stealth armor. 

"What's wrong with this?"

"The Ultra-Luxe has a dress code, babe."

"I don't really have any fancy clothes."

She immediately rose to her feet, grabbed Six by the elbow, and dragged her down the hallway without so much as a word. When they reached Veronica's room, she flung the door open and pointed at her bed.

"Sit. I'll handle this." Veronica turned around and began to push aside the clothes hanging in her closet. With a flourish, she produced a silky black dress and held it up.

"I don't want to wear a dress to this." Six flopped down on the bed. "Where would I even hide a gun in that thing?" 

"Oh...kay. Not a problem. I think I have something that might be more your speed." Veronica stood up on her toes and rifled around. "Here." She presented Six with a black suit jacket. Six stood up and slipped her arms through it and smoothed the front down. Wearing formal clothes made her feel slightly uncomfortable, but this wasn't so bad. 

"This fits pretty well. Is it yours?"

Veronica tapped her fingers on the closet door and looked down.

"It belonged to my ex. I should have gotten rid of it a while back, but - ah. I don't know. I just never did." She looked up and patted Six's shoulder with a smile that did a bad job of cloaking her gloom. "Well. That should do it. Good luck out there. Knock 'em dead. Hopefully not literally." Veronica rubbed the back of her hand and averted her eyes down to the floor. Her sadness was so palpable that Six could practically reach out and touch it. 

"You know." Six leaned her elbow against the dresser and tapped her finger against her mouth. "I could use some backup. It's too bad I don't know any gorgeous women who like getting dressed up. That's a real shame."

Veronica's eyes lifted and she whacked Six on the arm in a way that she intended to be playful, but always actually stung a little. 

"A nice girl like me? Going anywhere with a scoundrel like you?" Her mock offense broke into a real smile that made her eyes shine with pure delight. Six was about to ask her if that was a yes, but Veronica was already ransacking her closet again, ripping clothes off of their hangers and holding them up with excitement.

"Should I wear the pink dress? No, no, wait. Black? Blue?" She whipped around and shook her finger. "Don't you dare leave without me, okay? I'll be ready in fifteen minutes."

Six flopped back on the bed, certain that it would be closer to thirty, but not caring in the slightest.

 

 

The white marble floors and gilded chandeliers sparkled in the soft lighting, and Six was so overwhelmed that she had to restrain herself from getting out of her seat and walking right out the front door. She leaned back and watched the silk dresses billow on the dance floor in bright swirls of color.  _So, I probably wasn't a socialite in my past life._  She felt more comfortable dealing with drifters and farmers and bartenders. At least she knew how to talk to them. These people were different. It was like they had a whole book of rules written down somewhere, and Six was the only one who didn't know them already. Thankfully, she could bluff her way through situations like this - keep quiet, watch how everyone else behaved, and copy them. It was a system she'd nearly perfected.

She thought about the people starving on the other side of town, and her discomfort swelled into disgust. If she was the emperor, and the Strip was subject to her reign of terror, she'd board this place up and set it on fire. That daydream entertained her, but if there was anything she knew for certain, it was that she had to play ball with people she didn't like to get the support she needed. Swallowing her true feelings and smiling was getting easier with each passing day. 

To relieve her resentment, she resolved to just pilfer some things before she went home. They served a Merlot here that Arcade liked. Snagging a few bottles would be no trouble. Whenever she presented him with a nice bottle of wine, he always shook his head in disapproval at her thievery, but accepted them anyway. 

"May I have this dance?"

Even through the clinking of the champagne flutes and the laughter and the first notes of the band launching into a song, the voice reached her ears. A chill ran down her spine. She took a long drink of her whiskey before she lifted her eyes.

"Piss off."

Vulpes Inculta stood in front with a faint smile and a glint in his eyes. After seeing him in full Legion crimson, it was jolting to see him in a suit and waistcoat, as if he were simply any other well-heeled gambler. Six tried not to show her alarm. If he wanted to kill her, he could have picked a much better location.

"Remember me? We've met before." He smiled like he was actually trying to charm her. _He's young._ She hadn't realized it back in Nipton, but looking at him now, she was surprised that the head of the frumentarii was probably not that much older than her.  

"I remember." She set the glass down hard on the side table. "Piss off."

Vulpes took his jacket off and tossed it over his shoulder. Her eyes drifted down to his waistband. No weapons, as far as she could tell. He caught her eye again.

"I'm here to talk to you, and I think you'll be interested in what I have to say."

"I think you need to get lost before I make you eat my gun."

He clicked his tongue.

"I know we got off to a rough start, but allow me to try again." He held his hand out further.

"I'm not going to dance with you. If you have something to tell me, say it right now and go."

"It's a message from someone important. I'd rather not run the risk of anyone eavesdropping on us. You ought to know the best place for a private conversation is in the middle of a crowded room."

She froze, the drink an inch from her lips. This was probably a bad idea, but her curiosity was undeniable.

"Make any sudden moves, and I'll shoot first and ask questions later."

He offered his hand. She scowled and stood up without taking it. As they settled into position, he touched her waist and she shrank away from him.

"Come on, now." His voice was syrupy in her ear. "You don't want to attract any attention, do you? Play along. I know you're a better actress than that." She shivered and put her hand on his shoulder. He led her into a step. "Follow my lead. To the left."

"I know," she snapped. Much to her irritation, he leaned in closer to her. He may have been right about them being able to have this conversation unnoticed, but Six also recognized this for exactly what it was: a power play.

"It's been a while since we've seen each other. How was your vacation?"

His behavior was jarring compared to the first time she saw him in Nipton. He sounded like he was genuinely trying to be friendly. _It's an act,_ she told herself. _Everything he does is calculated._ They turned, and she hated how clammy her hand felt against his.

"A little bit of advice, from one professional to another." The breath of his whisper prickled against her ear. "You would blend in better if you wore a dress."

"Did you stalk me all this way to give me fashion tips, or did you want something?"

"Straight to the point, I see. Well, in that case, my Lord has a message for you. He requests your presence at the Fort, and has asked me to give you his mark. The numerous crimes you have committed against the Legion are hereby forgiven."

Her mouth went dry, and she struggled to put together what was happening. 

"Why the he - "

Without looking at her, he tightened his grip on her hand like a vise.

"Lower your voice, dear. Don't make a scene." His voice was smooth as silk. She looked up at his face and wanted to swing her elbow into his nose, but she took a deep breath and dropped her voice to his level.

"Why the hell would I do that?" She hissed, shifting her eyes to the wall over his shoulder. "You all want me dead."

"If Caesar wanted you dead, you'd be dead already." They turned again. "This conversation will be mutually beneficial, I assure you."

She thought about the securitron army in House's bunker, and the pieces of the plan started assembling themselves in her mind.  _This could be my chance to get into the bunker._  Getting out alive was a different story, but it was a new option, at the very least. 

"Fine. I'll consider it."

"There is no considering. My Lord commands it." Six felt pressure against her upper thigh, and realized he slipped his hand into her pocket. Her stomach started churning.

"I'll kill you."

"Oh, please. Your feigned innocence isn't convincing in the slightest, profligate." His eyes flicked to meet her gaze, and his chin tipped up with a confident sneer. "And take your hand off that gun. We both know that wouldn't end well for you."

Unfortunately, he was right. In about fifteen minutes, she was supposed to be winning the owners of this casino over, and blowing someone's head off in the middle of their dance floor wasn't exactly the best first impression. Her hand loosened on the pistol hidden in her jacket. Something fell into her pocket, and she realized he was tucking the mark into her pants.

"This will allow you safe passage into our territory. My Lord expects you soon." She tried to wrench her hand away, but he wouldn't release his grip.

"Aren't you going to finish the song?" At his question, Six rolled her eyes and stopped struggling to free herself. She knew he was watching her face, but she refused to meet his eyes.

"Where are you from, Courier?" His voice was still low, even though the sensitive part of their conversation was over.

"Far away." Six scanned the crowd for Veronica, but didn't see her anywhere. She probably got distracted talking to someone at the bar. 

"It's only polite to return the question. I'm from Utah, by the way."

"Whatever."

He led her into a spin, and she didn't really know what she was supposed to be doing, but she went through the motions as best as she could.

"A woman of few words, I see, but I already knew that." He pulled her in so close that she could feel their shoulders brush against each other. "I know plenty of things about you."

She decided not to answer, almost bored with this game. If he was trying to frighten her, it wasn't working. This song was so damn long, and she really would have preferred to be back in her seat with her drink. She endured his physical proximity and the feeling of her skin crawling until the music died down, and a few polite claps marked the end of the song. Vulpes released her hand and tipped his hat.

"Until next time, Courier."

She turned around and went straight back to her seat. It felt like the walls were breathing, but somehow, she found her way down to the leather chair. She stared at Vulpes as he slinked through the crowd toward the front door. A hand pressed into her shoulder, and Six flinched away.

"Did you know that guy?" Veronica pulled back. "Whoah. Are you okay?"

Six tightened her hand around the mark in her pocket and stared at the cream wallpaper in front of her. Despite its elegance, one of the corners was peeling up, exposing the cracked wall underneath.

"Yeah."

"Was he being weird? Say the word, and I'll go beat his ass." 

"No. It's fine." She finally met Veronica's eyes, and her hands flexed around the mark in her pocket. "It was just business." 

 

 

As soon as she got back to the casino, she herded everyone into their meeting room and closed the door. Veronica hiked up her dress and sat backwards in the chair closest to her, crossing her arms over the back.

"Okay, everyone. We have a big problem."  

"And you still have some mail." Raul nodded to the table. "Unless you forgot about that too." 

"I'll get to it later." Six waved her hand. "It's not important." 

"No, I mean - a lot of mail. It's a little strange. Of course your judgement is always impeccable, boss, but I really think you should take a look."

Six sat down and shuffled through all sixteen letters that were piled on the table. She didn't have to count them, because each one had a number written in the corner. They were all addressed to _the Lucky 38, New Vegas_ in the same narrow, cramped cursive letters. It felt like the floor fell out from underneath her.

She cut the first one open, not wanting to tear it in any way. It was long - several pages of the same lovely handwriting. She opened all of the envelopes, just to see if they were all actual letters, and she was delighted to see that they were. Then, she opened the last one - number sixteen. The page was blank except for two short sentences.

 

_Don't doubt me again._

_I miss you, too._

 

Somehow, in a way that only Joshua could pull off, he managed to be sweet and sentimental and infuriatingly stubborn all at the same time. She thought about him sitting down at his desk, heatedly writing fifteen responses in a row just to prove that he wouldn't ignore her, and her heart felt like it might burst. 

"What are you smiling at?" Veronica's voice brought her back to the present, and she remembered the problem they needed to deal with. 

"Nothing." She shoved the paper back in the envelope. "So. Back to business." After fishing around in her pocket, she held up the mark for everyone to see. "Caesar sent one of his guys to ask me to meet with him at the Fort. He says he wants to see me." 

They were all quiet for a moment.

"Oh, shit." Arcade's voice was soft. 

"Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like a super bad idea?" Veronica rested her chin on her hand. "I've gotten sort of fond of you. I'd hate to see you crucified, y'know?" 

"Yeah. Normally I'd tell him to bite me, but look." Six flattened her hands on the table. "I still need to get into House's bunker. It's right there in the Fort. And I've been putting it off 'cause I wasn't sure what to do, but maybe this is an opportunity." 

Arcade sighed and pushed his glasses up.  "I don't know, Six. There are so many things that could go wrong. This is a bizarre move on Caesar's part, to put it mildly. We know nothing about his intentions." 

Six had been hoping to recruit a few discontented soldiers in the Legion that might be willing to pass them inside information about their operations, but so far, they weren't having much success. That was one thing she and Arcade always agreed on: doing their research. Six never liked walking into a situation unprepared. 

"If there was some way we could get more details, I might be more comfortable." He continued. "But as it is, we're totally in the dark here."

Six sat up higher. Her eyes fell on the letters on the table, and her heart began to pound.

"I have an idea." She rubbed her temple. "I just realized that I actually do know a guy."

"Current soldier? Or a deserter?"

"Not a soldier. An ex-officer."

It was pin-drop silent in the room.

"You have contact with a defecting officer?" Arcade rubbed his chin. "That's...convenient. That could really help us." 

"No." Six tapped her finger on the table. "Not a defector. This guy left a long time ago. Not by choice." She briefly surveyed the expressions on her friends' faces. They seemed like they had a million questions, but none of them quite knew what to even ask first. Six stole a glance at Boone, whose jaw had set into a hard line.

"The Legion kicks people out? Wow. How much of a scumbag do you have to be to earn that distinction?" Arcade gave an incredulous laugh, and leaned back on the table. "So who is it?" 

"His name's Joshua Graham."

"No." Boone spoke up for the first time. "He's dead."

"He's not dead." Six's heart was racing, but her voice was soft. Boone's mouth fell open for a second before he recovered and shook his head.

"No. Six. No." His voice was sharper than she'd ever heard before. Everyone turned their heads to stare at him. It was so rare to see him worked up over anything. "He's not just any officer. He's the general that almost won Hoover Dam. They called him the Malpaís Legate."

"Oh, I remember him." Raul nodded with recognition. "That guy's a maniac."

"The shit I saw..." Boone's face was stone-still, but the vein on the side of his forehead bulged. The barely-controlled anger made his voice tremble. "You can't seriously be considering working with him?" Six flipped the silver lighter back and forth. 

"Well, this isn't a dictatorship, so that's why I'm asking your thoughts."

"My thoughts are that if he really isn't dead, somebody ought to put a bullet between his eyes and send him to hell where he belongs."

Raul snatched the pack of cigarettes from Six and squinted at her. "How do you know he's alive, anyway?" 

"I met him."

Everybody's eyebrows raised even higher. 

"When?" Veronica leaned forward.

"When I was in Utah."

"This is like pulling teeth." Arcade rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Give us the story, Six. Come on."

"Caesar tried to kill him after Hoover Dam. He lived, and went back to his people. Caesar destroyed his home and killed his entire family about a year ago. He was living with one of the tribes I stayed with. He's..." Six trailed off, unsure of how to explain the situation. "Not exactly as bad as he used to be, and doesn't support the Legion anymore, for obvious reasons."

"You talked to him yourself? So what's your honest opinion?"

"Uh..." Six tried not to squirm in her seat. "We spent plenty of time working together. He's...fine. We had no problems."  

"You're telling me those four months we all thought you dropped off the map, you were off shooting the breeze with the Malpaís Legate?" Raul whistled, his eyes twinkling in amusement. "I shouldn't be surprised at what you get into anymore, but you've really outdone yourself." 

Boone's lip curled with disgust.

"Do you know what he's done?"

Six took a moment to collect her thoughts. This was delicate. She didn't want to piss Boone off any more than she had to. His horror was fair, and she would never deny him that. At the same time, she knew Joshua better than any of them. She'd never claim he was without his flaws, and neither would he, but he was no monster - not anymore, at least.

"I do." She softened her voice. "I understand your hesitation. I don't expect you to trust him. I would never ask that of any of you. I'm asking that you trust my judgement in this particular situation, and I believe in his ability to help us."

"I trust you." Boone's voice was icy. "Because you never did anything to make me doubt you. Until now. This is crazy." That word felt like a punch in the gut. He should have known how much that would hurt her. Maybe he intended it to.

"I'm not crazy." Her hand clamped around the cold metal of the lighter. "I'm thinking about this logically. I need to get in that bunker and walk out alive. If I don't, then the Legion will steamroll everyone at the Dam. The NCR isn't ready to handle it." She took a deep breath and looked around the table, her voice firm with conviction. "I think we all need to put aside our personal feelings about this and do whatever it takes to win. You're welcome to argue otherwise, but that's where I stand."

"I mean," Veronica broke in between them, then faltered. "Shit. This is tough. I mean, he'd be useful, right?"

Six nodded. She had a hundred things she could say about Joshua, but she knew a defense of his character would be wasted here. She needed to talk strategy to win them over.

"That's what I'm saying. He's got more insight into what these guys are like than just about anyone else, and he's given me some good advice already. We have to use every weapon in our arsenal if we want to make it through this."

"Using Caesar's ex-right hand man against him," Arcade mused. "That's cold. Don't get me wrong, it's a great move. I'm surprised you waited this long to suggest it, actually."

"Okay." Raul lit a cigarette. "I got another question for you. If this guy's such a jackass, why do you think he'd agree to help you out?"

It was a good question. Of course, it was one she couldn't answer with the entire truth. What she could give them was closer to two-thirds of the truth, and that would have to do. 

"A few reasons. I helped him out with a military situation of his own in Utah, so he owes me one. Plus, I don't think he'd say no to an opportunity to help take Caesar down. He hates him more than just about anybody." Six shook her head. "Look, if we all want to think about it for a while, that's fine with me. I'm not in any rush.' 

"Sure!" Yes Man interjected over the intercom. Six forgot he was listening to them. "Take your time. I'm sure the Monster of the East will be considerate enough to take the scenic route to Hoover Dam." 

They all exchanged glances among themselves. Yes Man had a point. Their time was running out. Soon enough, Lanius would come knocking at their gates, flanked by his army. It was crucial that they were ready when the time came. 

"Okay. Executive decision." Six straightened her shoulders. "We vote now."

"If you think he's good, then I think he's good!" Yes Man's voice sounded over the speaker. 

"I say yes." Raul ashed his cigarette, and by the tiny smile gathering in the corner of his mouth, Six had a suspicion that he was mostly just entertained and wanted to see how this would play out. 

"Hell no." Boone crossed his arms.

"I'm on the fence." Veronica leaned back. "I guess I'll vote yes. Do what you gotta do."

Arcade crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back on the table, turning it over in his mind. He was the one she really needed to convince. If he agreed, the trigger was as good as pulled. He grimaced as if he were doing something physically unpleasant.

"I understand your game plan, even if I don't love the consequences. The enemy of our enemy is our friend, and all that. As long as I don't have to talk to him outside of this room, then I vote yes."

"Then it's decided. I'll ask him. Once we know his answer, we'll reconvene and decide how to handle my visit with Caesar." 

"Well," Arcade hesitated. "Let's hope dancing with the devil is worth it." 

Six didn't know whether he meant dealing with Caesar, or Joshua, or both of them, but she didn't feel like asking. They all probably needed some space to think, anyway. She gathered Joshua's letters and Caesar's mark and carried them to her room. She still needed to read through everything he sent her, but that was a pleasure she'd save until she got her work done. With a sigh, she stretched out on the bed and spread a fresh sheet of paper on top of the dictionary.

As she stared at the white page, everything that just happened that day smacked her across the face. Getting her friends to agree to asking Joshua for help was so far-fetched that she'd been entirely wrapped up in how she could accomplish it. Only now was the reality of what she'd pulled off setting in on her. There were a lot of ways this could go wrong. Boone might never forgive her for even suggesting it. Six tapped her pen on the page and paused, wondering if she was about to make a mistake.

Even if she asked, Joshua might say no. The journey from Zion was long, and maybe he would rather stay there and put all of this conflict behind him. A small part of her kind of hoped he would refuse. An even smaller part that she wished she could ignore couldn't consider anything but the possibility of seeing him again. 

 _No,_ she told herself. If this was going to happen, she had to put their personal relationship aside. Her feelings didn't need to enter into the equation. There were plenty of strategic reasons why he would be useful.

_Would I be asking him for help if there was nothing between us?_

She puzzled over that, but the answer came to her in her gut, strong and fast. _Yes._  She still would. Someone had to do what needed to be done to protect New Vegas, and she was the one who found herself sitting in the tower overlooking the city. Ever since she'd woken up in Goodsprings, she was always up against enemies that were bigger, stronger, smarter, and better equipped than her. Fighting dirty was the only way she survived for this long, and there was no reason to change that now. This was war. Caesar wasn't going to pull any punches, and neither could she. 

Six bit down on her tongue in concentration and began to write.

_I ran into one of your ex-coworkers today, and he was wearing the ugliest hat I've ever seen. He called me a profligate, which was kind of rude. Otherwise, it went fine._

_On that note, can I ask you for one more favor?_


	41. XLI

"One more target. Wanna say a little something to mark the occasion? Any last respects?" Six looked down the scope of her rifle. Next to her, Boone peered through his binoculars. A solemn expression came over his face.

"Get fucked."

Six forced herself not to smile. If she moved a muscle, it would throw her aim off.

"He's still walking around?"

"Yep. Reference lamppost. Left fifty meters."

"Lining up." She aimed down the crosshairs of the scope until a man's head was squarely in the middle. "Ready."

"Send it."

She exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The crack echoed off of the canyon walls behind them.

"You got 'em. Five of five down. Good riddance."

At Boone's confirmation that she hit their final target, she lowered the rifle and rolled onto her back. They were cleaning up a gang on the outskirts of North Vegas. Six already gave them a warning to go somewhere else, but they were still raiding the travelers flowing into Freeside, mostly refugees from the NCR. She was more than happy to overlook a certain amount of petty crime, but it came to her attention that the gang was kidnapping people on the roads. At this point, she had no choice but to eliminate every last one of them she found. There was no screwing around when it came to that kind of thing. _Not in my territory._ She could have ordered someone else to do it, but she missed this kind of work, and it was good to get out of the city for a bit. Besides, she liked the frantic reaction once troublemakers realized it was Courier Six herself coming to take them out. A deadly reputation did wonders for keeping the city in line. No one ever dared cross her twice.

She swatted at a gnat and rested her hands on her stomach. The sun was already setting, turning the sky a dusky red. Boone stayed on his stomach, still peering through the binoculars. Things between them had been tense since they talked about Joshua. Six decided to give him space and not force the issue, and it was working. Slowly but surely, he seemed to be thawing, and their interactions were almost back to normal.

It was a shitty situation all around. As for Joshua, she hadn't heard anything from him, but she was expecting a response any day. Maybe he needed time to think about it, but she hoped he'd at least give her an answer soon, even if it was a no.

"Don't see any more. We should hang around a little longer." Boone lowered the binoculars.

"Aye-aye, captain." Six closed her eyes. The sound of the power generators on the street below them buzzed in the warm air. Spring here wasn't exactly beautiful. To her, it felt restless, like waiting for the other shoe to finally drop. She had a hangover today, like most days, and that was contributing to her mood. Her tongue felt dry and awful in her mouth. 

"You kids done yet?" Raul's voice crackled through the air, and Six jumped a little. She still wasn't used to the Pip Boy on her wrist. Doc Mitchell gave it to her a year ago and she graciously accepted, but promptly tossed it in her bag and forgot about it. It felt clunky on her arm, and she didn't like the idea of something recording where she went. It sat gathering dust for the past year, but Yes Man suggested she start wearing it so he could keep in touch with her, so she dug it out. It was just one of those things she had to get used to, now that she had all of these responsibilities. She raised her wrist and pressed the button.

"We're all good up here. Just making sure there aren't any stragglers. That headshot was fast, by the way. My compliments."

Raul was watching the street below them. One of the Fiends thought she'd be smart and run away, but Raul took care of it before Six had time to chamber another round.

"Eh. My hip hurts. I think I pulled something."

"You can limp back up here. We're just hanging out."

"As thrilling as that sounds, I think I'll go get a drink instead."

"Suit yourself."

Six took her helmet off and closed her eyes again. A coyote howled in the distance. Several minutes passed with no sound but the lazy breeze blowing past them. The sun on her face felt nice, and she wasn't in any hurry to get up.

"You got shot in the head." Boone's voice broke the silence. It seemed nonsensical, but Six had a feeling he was going somewhere with this. He wasn't really the type to talk just to hear the sound of his own voice. She pressed her back against the warm dirt and folded her hands again.

"Yep."

"What was it like?"

She cracked one eye open and studied him carefully. His eyes were forward, but if she had to guess, he'd been staring at the scar on her face. As much action as First Recon saw, he was hidden in sniper nests most of the time, and it was plausible that he'd never been shot before. It made sense that he'd be curious.

"I don't remember. It was like nothing. Darkness. It's not a bad way to go. Coming back is another story." She closed her eyes again. "That part was rough."

They'd known each other for nearly a year, but this was the first time they ever talked about what happened to her. When they first met, she wouldn't have been able to even have this conversation. Now, it didn't feel like there was a physical weight on her chest every time she thought about it. The distance helped, somehow.

"Huh. You must have done something good, to still be alive."

The air on her face chilled, and she knew the sun must be low in the sky now. A few bats were flying overhead. Six heard the flapping of their wings.

"Or something really bad, to get shot in the first place." The thought amused her, but Boone didn't laugh. "Anyway, there's no way of knowing. Things don't work like that."

"Yeah. They do. Everything balances out."

The conviction in his voice surprised her. He sounded miserable, like the thought brought him no comfort, but still utterly certain of it.

"Do you believe in God or something?"

"No."

"Then who's keeping score?"

"The universe has a way. All I know is that debts get settled eventually."

"I don't know. I don't think it works like that." She shifted against the dirt. "I was in the wrong place, wrong time, and now I'm here. That's all."

"I can't believe that. Would drive me crazy. Things happen for a reason."

"You should join a church." She rubbed her eyes. "They're into that sort of thing."

Boone scoffed. Six sat up and put her helmet back on. It was getting too chilly to sit out here comfortably.

"Gettin' dark, but it looks like there's a caravan heading in." Boone dropped the binoculars.

"Guess the newcomers will see our handiwork when they come in. Good. Things have changed 'round here. They should know exactly who they're dealing with."

 

 

Six slumped into the kitchen, still sore from lying in an uncomfortable position for the last few hours, and everyone else was already hanging out in the kitchen. They greeted her as she poured herself a drink and helped Boone unpack all his gear. She heard Yes Man roll up to her side before she even got the chance to set down her rifle.

"Hello Courier Six." He sounded bubbly as ever. "You have a visitor."

"It's late. Tell them to come back later."

"I tried, but he was extremely hostile! He insisted on waiting here for you."

Six lifted her glass to her lips, wondering who could be here at this time of night. These days, she was no stranger to people stopping by to yell at her about one thing or the other, but they usually did it at more convenient times. 

"Who is it?"

"He says his name is Joshua Graham."

Six choked on her whiskey.

"Uh." Her eyes watered at the burn in the back of her nose. "Are you sure?" It was a stupid question, but she didn't know what else to say.

"Yep! He spelled it for me and everything. Like I said, he was very argumentative." 

"He's here right now?"

"Yes sir!" Yes Man chirped. "I sent him up to an available room." Six's mind started racing as she put everything together. Joshua didn't send her a response because he must have immediately packed up and left as soon as he received her letter. Now that she was considering it, that seemed exactly like something he'd do.

Her first impulse was to go up to him, but they were on her turf now. She had to keep up certain appearances.

"Okay. Tell him I'm here." She took another swig. "Let's meet in the big room."

"Sure! The big room." He knew she meant the penthouse, but of course he had to be a smart-ass about it anyway, which she never really minded. Yes Man rolled away, and Six felt everyone's eyes on her, but she deliberately didn't look at them. Raul poured himself another drink, and she noticed he poured an extra one. She gave him a nod as he slid it across the table for her. She cleared her throat and looked around. It was time to act like she was in charge around here, because, well - she was. 

"Have you all seen him already?"

They shook their heads no.

"We just got back here, too." Veronica tapped her finger on the side of the bottle in front of her.

"Okay. I'm gonna head upstairs to talk to him."

Boone said nothing as he turned around and left. 

"See you tomorrow. Goodnight." She tried to sound understanding as she called after him. She wanted him to know she was sympathetic, even if she was doing something he didn't agree with. No one else made a move to leave. They resumed talking, but in more subdued tones. Six marched over to the elevator, and to her surprise, everyone got up and followed her.

"You guys wanna give me some privacy for this?"

"Absolutely not." Arcade clicked his pen back and forth, unable to disguise his nerves.

"I'm kind of curious to meet this guy," Veronica mumbled. Raul brought the entire bottle of whiskey with him. That might come in handy later. ED-E nestled in close to her shoulder. As they all crowded into the elevator to the penthouse, Six ran over the right words to say. _Welcome to New Vegas. I hope your trip was comfortable. Thanks for agreeing to assist us._ No, too stiff. _Thanks for agreeing to help us._

As she descended the steps and took her place in front of the control panel, her pulse was racing. She took a few long breaths through her nose to slow it down. It had been four months since they'd last seen each other. Things had cooled off enough that working together wouldn't be a problem. They could both be adults about this. They had a lot more serious things to worry about beside their past relationship. _Past being the key word,_ she reminded herself. She stood against the edge of her desk and sipped her drink. No one was talking now. They were all standing around, tense.

"Your guest is here!" Yes Man proclaimed. She forced herself to take one last deep breath before she looked up.

It was at that moment that she realized she'd been trying to give part of her past - of herself, really - a quiet burial, like she could cover it over in fistfuls of dirt and walk away, mournful but sober. In some way of knowing beyond words, she understood now that part of her would never die until she did. It clawed its way free, grabbing her and shaking back and forth, refusing to let go, questioning how she thought she could let go so easily. In some way, she thought that seeing him again would soothe the hole he'd left in her life, patching it over and letting it heal in peace. She was wrong. 

She saw him standing in front of her, so out of place against the shiny marble floor and the fluorescent lights, but it wasn't just him. The memories she'd been suppressing jumped to life at his mere presence, full-force, all pine-scented wind and snow that squeaked underneath her boots, sunlit mornings and moonlit nights of pressing her lips to the white bandages on his jaw, of the bruising pressure of his hands on her hips, of his fingers brushing along her ribs like her skin was made of delicate gossamer. They were probably the happiest days in her very short memory. She would cling to them until she took her last breath.

Of course, her backstabbing brain picked that moment to quit on her. All of the professional words she'd gathered up to say to him melted away. They just stood there, staring at each other from across the room. To her horror, neither one of them said a damn word.

 _Say something,_ she begged herself. _Anything._

Finally, mercifully, Joshua saved her. He put his hands in his pockets and looked up at her again, sort of out of the corner of his eye like he didn't want to stare directly for too long.

"You cut your hair."

Hearing his voice again almost sent another dizzying wave crashing over her.

"Yeah."

His eyes traveled over her, from head to toe to head again. She really wished she wasn't thinking it, but he looked just as good as she remembered. Their eyes met as their once-overs crossed paths, and she would have killed a man to know what was going through his mind right now.

"It suits you."

"Oh." She tugged at the strand in front of her ear and looked away. "Thank you." They were silent again. She leaned on the table and set her glass down, trying to sound casual. "It's been a while, hasn't it? A few months, maybe?"

"Four months." He responded fast.

"Four. That's right. Four of them."

Veronica cleared her throat, and Six shook her head, suddenly remembering that there were people in the world other than him. Everyone else was staring at her, completely bewildered. Her brain finally checked back in and caught up with her mouth, and she remembered the lines she prepared for herself. 

"Well, thanks for coming. I hope your trip went well."

"The Lord blessed me with a peaceful journey. Thank you for your hospitality." Another thing she remembered about him: he knew how to act right in these situations. Six thought about the first time she met Joshua, and how surprising she found his courtesy when she compared it to the brutality she'd heard of. She knew better now than to assume such things could not coexist in the same person. 

"It's no trouble. Anyway, as you can see, these are my...associates." She gestured to each in turn, about five hundred percent sure that he wasn't going to remember any of their names. Hell, she was having a hard time remembering them right now. "Veronica Santangelo, Raul Tejada, Arcade Gannon, uh. Dr. Arcade Gannon, I guess." She gave Arcade a little smile. He always felt weird when people used his title. "ED-E. And Yes Man, but I believe you've already met."

"Sure did!" Yes Man's overly-cheerful interjection combined with Joshua's hard stare indicated that he'd already made at least one enemy here. Aside from that, Joshua looked around at everyone else.

"Pleased to meet you all."

"Likewise." Veronica gave him a small wave. The others voiced their agreement. They seemed unsure of how to handle the situation. _I don't know either,_ Six thought. _However, it's my job to act like I do._ She'd always been good at that.

"Well, if you need anything, just ask. This building is probably the safest place on the entire Strip. No one gets in or out without my say-so, so don't worry about that. If you have no objections, I'd like to convene tomorrow to bring you up to speed with our current objectives." Six mentally congratulated herself on that last sentence. That dictionary was coming in handy lately.

"Of course."

"Well, that's all the business I have for tonight. Help yourself to anything you like. If you have any questions, you can ask Yes Man or any of the other Securitrons for help. And me, of course," she added, faltering a bit.

"I will. Thank you."

Six took another drink and tried to estimate how quickly she could get out of this situation without it seeming abnormal. Really, she wanted to talk to him alone. It was quiet for a moment before Raul cleared his throat.

"A drink for you?" He put his hand on the bottle of whiskey.

"No thank you. I don't drink," Joshua replied. Raul tapped his thumb on the neck of the bottle. He shot Joshua a confused sidelong glance as he poured himself another.

"So," Veronica broke in, clearly trying to break the awkwardness. "How long did it take you to get here from Utah?" 

"Less than two weeks. Travel has improved significantly since - " He looked at Six. "Since Courier Six helped us drive an invading tribe out."

"Cool. Cool." Veronica sipped her beer. "She can be helpful sometimes."

Arcade was looking Joshua up and down - inspecting him, no doubt. Joshua's gaze fell on him, and he paused, uncharacteristically knocked off-center.

"You are a Follower of the Apocalypse?"

"Yes." Arcade was wary, but not unpleasant. "I am." Joshua nodded like he was thinking, but he didn't continue further. Arcade clicked his pen again. "And you...live with tribals? Do you have access to much medical care out there?" Six couldn't help but smile. In his curiosity, it seemed Arcade had almost forgotten the weirdness of the situation.

"I live with a tribe in Zion Canyon. They have their own methods of healing, but it's not equivalent to what you have here."

"That's interesting. So you don't take - " Arcade's eyes widened as caught himself. Regret washed over his face immediately. Veronica shot him a glare. He was one of the kindest people Six knew, but he had an unfortunate habit of putting his foot in his mouth if he wasn't careful. 

"No. I don't take anything for the burns." Six remembered how indifferent Joshua seemed about his burn scars when she first met him. She knew now that wasn't entirely truthful, but she could see why she bought it at first. His nonchalance was rather convincing. "So you are a doctor?"

"Yes." Arcade said, seemingly surprised that he hadn't offended Graham. "I work in the Followers camp in Freeside when I'm not here."

"Freeside?" Joshua raised an eyebrow. "In the Mormon Fort?"

"Yes. Exactly."

"I'm pleased to hear that the site is used for healing. I would imagine the Followers are alleviating a good deal of misery here." 

Arcade seemed even more caught off guard by that comment. "Uh...yeah. We try to do our best." He squinted. "Oh, you're a Mormon, aren't you?"

"I am. I'm from New Canaan."

There were a few more smatterings of small talk, but Six was having a hard time focusing on it. She noticed Raul sliding her another glass of whiskey across the table. She thanked him with her eyes and he gave a small shake of his head in response. She was tired down to her bones, and although this had gone relatively smoothly, she thought it was enough for tonight.

"I'm going to bed. You all feel free to carry on. I'll see you all tomorrow." She looked at Joshua. "Is there anything else you need?"

"No. I'll be going now. Thank you."

As if he knew she was going to hang back for a second, he turned and left the room. Six could tell everyone else was dying to comment, but they gave it long enough until they could be reasonably sure he was well out of earshot. Arcade opened his mouth to speak, then stopped short and sipped his drink instead. His face had to be hurting from keeping his eyebrows raised for so long.

"So that was - " Veronica made an indistinct hand gesture that somehow captured what they were all thinking. "He's somehow both more normal and even weirder than I expected."

"Not a bad description, if you ask me." Six surveyed the group around her. "So, I'll see you guys tomorrow?"

The others murmured assent as they split up. Six let them all take the elevator. While she waited, she replayed the events of night over in her mind. It went about as well as it could have. Veronica, Raul, and Arcade were a little unsure of how to respond to Joshua, but they were all nice enough. Boone - Boone was another story. She made a mental note to check in with him tomorrow and see how he was doing. It was probably best that she keep them apart as much as possible. _And Joshua -_

He was right here, right now, in this building. She hoped he couldn't tell that she was on the verge of losing her mind the entire time they were talking. He seemed collected, as if he didn't really have any burning desire to speak to her further, but there were still so many things she had to say and so many questions she had for him. 

She wondered if he was settling in okay. The trip to New Vegas had to be uncomfortable for him. _I should go check on him._ It was only considerate, after all. She ignored how fast her heart was beating as she pressed the button to call the elevator. Her reflection in the mirrored doors of the elevator caught her attention, and tried to make sure there wasn't any dirt on her from being outside all day. Everything happened so fast that there was no time for her to change earlier. She pushed her hair behind her ear, only halfway paying attention to what she was doing. The thought of being alone with him again was too exhilarating for her to think about anything else.

The elevator dinged, and she gathered all of her courage as the door slid back and she stepped out onto the twenty-third floor. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next ch will probably be up soon...soon...


	42. XLII

Joshua was unzipping his vest when he heard the knock on the door. His hand paused on the zipper, unsure for a moment whether to take it off or leave it on. After a second, he pulled it down and took his time placing it on the desk next to the bed he'd been given. 

He knew it was Six, of course. She must have something else to discuss. Normally, he would assume she was here to stay for a while and catch up, but now he wasn't entirely sure. Earlier, she seemed so impassive that he almost doubted his decision to come. When he saw her for the first time, he wasn't prepared for an audience. Perhaps she was sending him a message. 

The pleasantries she gave him were far too mechanical for someone who used to confess to him the thoughts pooling in her mind that she quietly saved up and hid away from everyone else. It was as if she was entirely unaware or unconcerned with the fact that not so long ago, they passed the days away begging for each other against a succession of wooden floors and rough blankets in endless identical old cabins as if nothing else mattered. But there she was, the very same person, standing in front of him with a lifeless imitation of a smile curling up on her face and limp words on her lips. _Hope your trip went well. Thanks for coming. How's the weather?_

And right now, whichever person she might be now was waiting outside his door. He wasn't always good at predicting what she was going to do next, but he still opened the door without hesitation. 

"Hey, Joshua." The shape of her lips around his name melted his doubts. Her voice was so different than it was twenty minutes ago: velvety warm, a little yearning. "It's me," she added, entirely unnecessary, entirely endearing. 

"I see that." His hand was on the door frame. Her gaze darted over his shoulder, then back to him. She shifted her weight, and for the first time all night, her demeanor was something close to bashful.

"Can I come in for a second?"

He opened the door wider and held it open for her as she entered the room. Without rushing, he closed the door behind them. After a second of sizing up the situation, he decided to let her make the first move. It was not a favored tactic of his, but this entire confrontation was her orchestration. She invited him here to this tower, and she made her way up to find him here. He was curious about her intentions.  

As he turned back around to face her, it struck him again that his memories did her no justice. It was remarkable how much a few months could change a person. In his memories, she was a pretty young woman in a dead man's oversized armor, closed-off until he learned how to coax out her playful smile and meandering words. She was always confident, but there was something different about her now: she stood up straight in her crisp black armor, more decisive, more commanding. The line of her jaw was harder, revealed by the loss of some of the youthful roundness of her face.

The fact that he'd been lusting after someone that young brought him a tepid but familiar guilt. For someone who committed so many sins, he never stopped noting each one, even if the emotional impact was lessened by their sheer volume. Whenever a new sin cropped up, he catalogued it away, adding it to the long list of things he'd have to answer for on the day he stood before God for judgement.

Over the past few months, he would often picture her in charge of all of these people, gently amused at the idea of her leading an army. Now, he had no trouble imagining it at all. She changed. She talked less, but more clearly. It was a detached assertiveness, like she was so in control that she had no need to prove it. The person he'd known in Zion was no one he would ever call innocent, but there was a subtle self-consciousness to her: she tried to act older and tougher than she seemed. Now, there was no attempt: the maturity draped effortlessly around her shoulders, simply worn and not shown off. It looked good on her, he had to admit. If she ever lived long enough to make it to fifty years, she'd be an incredibly imposing woman.

Power was an interesting thing, and it was made all the more fascinating when it shone through such an unassuming body. Men like him were easy to understand. Their physical stature gave them a way to effortlessly dominate others; their displays of power were expected. An average-framed, wholesome-faced woman who carried herself with the nerve and backbone of a six-foot man would always interest him, at the very least. That seed was present in her from the first day they met, but now, it was in full bloom.

In a way, it was like meeting her for the first time all over again. They stayed on opposite sides of the room, as if they were afraid to lose the distance that kept them apart.

"Mind if I sit down?" Her voice was low. Perhaps she was just trying to be quiet. Her eyes shifted up to him. Perhaps she was drawing him forward, leaving small pieces of bait to entice him. It was never necessary, but he enjoyed it. It was the only cat-and-mouse game he'd ever played in his life where there were times he felt like he might be the prey.

"Not at all."

She laid her helmet on the coffee table. Although it was late, he could tell she had been outside working all day. The wispy curls around her ears were damp with sweat. She settled down in an ostentatious red and gold armchair near the bed, and he remained standing.  

"It's good to see you. How have you been?" 

"Good. Busy." 

"I know. I've heard plenty about you."

"Oh." For the first time, a hint of levity worked its way into her tone. "You shouldn't believe half that shit. People say all kinds of things. How is everyone in Zion?"

"Fine." The Dead Horses and the Sorrows were capable fighting forces now. He'd taught them well, and he had no doubts about their ability to maintain the peace.

"And the rest of the New Canaanites?"

"They're doing well. We've kept in contact." He'd entertained the idea of joining them in their new settlement, but if he was truthful with himself, he didn't know if he'd ever leave Zion for good. He loved his tribe, of course, but he wasn't sure if living with them again was the right decision. Shame nearly paralyzed him whenever he considered the role he played in their attempted destruction. If he would only bring them more grief, he would rather stay away. He decided to move on from that particular thought. "Daniel is marrying again."

"Oh." It was a syllable that peaked and then slid down a few notes, drawn out with a slight affectation. "Good for him." Her eyebrows raised. "Wait. Again?"

"He was married once before. I didn't know her well, but his wife was a distant cousin of mine, actually."

She looked down, not needing him to say any more than that. It was understood that she'd died during the destruction of New Canaan.

"Oh. That's sad. I didn't know he had a wife." That didn't surprise Joshua. Daniel didn't like talking about her. 

"It's usually safe to assume. It's rare for our people to remain unmarried."

She nodded and pulled on a curl near her ear. That was one familiar habit she retained.  

"Present company excluded?" A teasing spark flickered up in her voice. 

"I would be the aforementioned rarity."

Like a bird gracefully alighting on a branch, the hint of her old smile came back to her face, joyful, nose-scrunching.

"Hard to believe no one locked it down yet. You're such a catch."

It was so absurd of her to suggest that he would find anyone else that he almost returned her smile. To borrow her words, he was probably the exact opposite of a catch.

The lighthearted ribbing brought Joshua's thoughts to a related, but less-humorous subject. He wondered if she'd been seeing anyone. If he asked, her response would be easy to predict: a dismissive wave, a declaration that she was too busy for anything like that. He would like to imagine that he was above ruminating on such petty matters, but it wasn't the first time the thought came to him since he'd last seen her. It probably wasn't even the fiftieth. If he spent so much time thinking about it, it must mean that he was not above those notions after all. _Or, they aren't petty._ He tried to ignore that as he watched her run her hands over her knees.

"So. This is pretty different from Zion. What do you think of the city?" She picked at a thread on the armchair, seemingly ready to move on at his lack of response.

Joshua thought about the unfamiliarity of everything, the neon lights and robots making him feel like he'd found himself a hundred years away instead of merely a hundred miles; the dirty streets, crawling with drunken soldiers and thick with noise and smoke and brazen sin.

"A veritable Sodom and Gomorrah. It's the worst place I've ever been."

Her smile only widened as she leaned to the side and curled a leg up against her body, finally relaxing.

"I knew you would say that." She tilted her head onto her hand, slipping back into an unbearable familiarity. "It does kind of suck, doesn't it?"

It would be easy for someone at first glance to assume she was a libertine. He knew the opposite was true: she might partake in habits like drinking and smoking, but any streak of hedonism within her was much smaller than in most people. Both of them had a taste for the spartan lifestyle. As for sex - well. That might be the exception. They were both guilty of that vice precisely because they enjoyed it too much. 

It was too easy to get distracted with her sitting right there. Back to the topic at hand: New Vegas with all of its sins of every kind. It didn't seem like a place Six would want to live. Deep down, she might wish she was back in Zion nearly as much as he did.

"If it doesn't appeal to you, why are you here?"

Her cheer faded.

"Business. The same reason you are, I guess - which I'm sure you've been wondering about."

"You want some kind of advice, or assistance, I imagine."

Her mouth set into a straight line, looking serious and regretful beyond her years, and she leaned forward.

"Things aren't looking good here. You know about Lanius, right?"  _My replacement._ As if Joshua could avoid knowing about him. He nodded at her to continue. "Well, rumor is, he's gearing up to attack the dam. In my opinion, the NCR's spread themselves too thin to defend it. I think I've played my hand pretty well, but as the situation stands now, I would bet on a Legion victory."

Joshua tried not to concern himself with wordly political affairs, but the idea of New Vegas falling to Caesar genuinely disturbed him. 

"That would be disastrous." _For you. For me. For all of Nevada and Utah._ "I pray it does not come to pass."

She leaned back languidly in the armchair, her knees spreading out as she took up more space.

"Well, you don't have to just pray about it. What was it you said to me, back in Zion?" A sly smile moved across her face. "That we can't expect God to do all the work? I think we handled things as well as we could. But in the grand scheme of things, what we did was a temporary solution to a bigger problem. The White Legs are gone, but some other tribe will take their place and probably attack again. But I have a plan. I want to destroy the Legion for good, or at least ensure they'll never come back here. Give me a few weeks of your time, and there's a much better chance that you'll live the rest of your life in peace. No more fearing for your life. No more hiding."

It surprised him how calculated she was in her persuasion.  _She isn't taking my yes for granted._ Her words were tailored to appeal to his basest desires: crippling the Legion, keeping his adopted home safe, and the third, unspoken desire that they were both well aware of but unwilling to acknowledge: being around each other again. He recognized a pitch when he heard one, but it didn't stop him from being swayed by it anyway.

"Only a few weeks?"

For the first time that entire evening, she almost bit her fingernails like she used to do. It was a habit that she appeared to have lost since he'd last seen her.

"Yeah. I don't want you anywhere near the fighting or the dam, actually. That's not why I need you. I have some plans that I think you could help me with."

It was a confusing statement. First of all, the phrase _I need you,_ which, God help him, coming from her lips fortified his resolve as much as it weakened him. Then, he considered her reluctance to involve him in the fighting. It was unsure what other use anyone would have for him other than as a weapon. He was no leader. He might have acted as one for the Dead Horses, but at heart, he was just a general. Putting civilizations to the torch was his only skill and legacy. Deciding who to take apart and why was not his province. 

 _She's the leader._ It surprised him that he didn't put it together before. He started tapping his foot, unaware of how he should deal with that information. The prospect of answering to someone else again made him slightly uncomfortable. 

"Look." She ran her finger along the arm of the chair, drawing him out of his thoughts. "I know you have a life and other things you could be doing. If you're not interested, there's no hard feelings on my end. I'll help you get back to Zion, if that's what you want."

"We both know that's not going to happen." He meant it as a statement of fact, but she looked startled. For a moment, neither one of them moved.

"Okay, then." She folded her hands across her stomach. There was no relief in her demeanor. Either she expected him to agree, or she wasn't emotionally invested in his answer.

"What's this plan of yours?" It was probably as hare-brained as any of the others, but she had a talent for making the improbable happen.

"We'll talk about it tomorrow. If it sounds good to you, then we'll move forward immediately. If not, then of course, you're free to leave whenever you want." She lowered her voice, and it lost the official air he hadn't even noticed she'd put on. "Seriously. Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate your help."

Her words implied a finality, but she made no move to get up. Instead, she threw one limber leg over the side of her chair. Her aversion to sitting in her seat properly always was a mental torment for him. There was no amount of military talk that would distract him from those trains of thought. He imagined pressing that wayward knee all the way back against her chest. The armchair would provide an interesting angle. He'd have almost complete control over her, and an excellent view. His eyes darted over to the bed. It was far larger than anything he was accustomed to. If they'd made it work on the narrow old cots in Zion, he wondered what they could do here. He looked up at her, and she was already staring at him with an unreadable expression. He shifted, hoping she couldn't tell what was running through his mind. 

"Is there something else you'd like to discuss?" He could have spoken to her all night, but he was starting to feel the fragile impersonal facade between them straining. If she stayed here any longer, it was only a matter of time before it crumbled.

"Oh. Nothing. I was just thinking that this is kind of interesting."

"What is?"

She stretched her arms above her head, giving him an excellent view of the curve of her back.

"I guess I'm technically your boss." Her arms fell back behind her head. "That means you take orders from me now." 

There were some things in life that he would never understand, and why he was at least half-hard right now was one of them. His gut told him to just go over to her and start unzipping her clothing until he could get his hands on her skin again. She would probably like that. However, he stayed exactly where he was, not daring to move a muscle. Part of him always feared that with her, he might go too far one day and cross a line that upset her, and she'd want nothing to do with him ever again. To his surprise, his churning thoughts were interrupted when she got to her feet.

"Well. I guess I should go. See you tomorrow." She stayed standing in place.

"Goodnight."

It was impossible to tell which one of them moved toward the door first, but they both ended up crossing the room. Even though he knew he was making the right decision, his heart felt heavy as he stared at her back while she left. The latch on the door clicked shut, and he was alone, staring at the dark wooden paneling, waiting. 

A quick knock made him reach for the doorknob. He didn't know what he was expecting, but as she stood in front of him again, her stillness surprised him. She made no move forward.

"You were still by the door?" She raised her eyebrows. 

"With you, the second time is often the charm." 

That made her smile before the humor dropped from her face. 

"I have my first order for you." 

"And that would be?" 

"I think we'd both rather skip the whole dance this time. Take your pants off." 

"May I close the door first?" 

"I always liked your manners." She smiled again, and the wave of anticipation in his stomach crested, stronger the second time around. "You may." 

This time, when he closed the door behind them, it was so fast he almost slammed it shut.  


	43. XLIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically an entire chapter of reunion flirting and indecency don't expect any plot advancement lmao sorry. I'm planning on posting another chapter tomorrow too

They didn't make it very far before Six stopped everything. She wanted to shower first, and Joshua tried to hide his exasperation as they shuffled around their half-removed clothes, and he reluctantly lifted his arm so she could get out from between him and the wall. It was unclear to him how someone could have such an unprecedented gift for killing the moment, but Six managed somehow.

After he unwound the bandages from his hands, he was unsure of what to do while he waited, so he sat down on the bed. It was far too springy for his taste. Over thirty years of sleeping outside made him accustomed to discomfort. As Joshua ruminated on that, the rush of running water in the bathroom caught his attention; it was yet another luxury he had little experience with.

Small things like this shocked him, when he considered them. Sitting in a bedroom and waiting for someone to wash should be so commonplace and uneventful that many people might not even take note of it. Most couples probably did it all the time.

 _I've never done this before in my life._ It was a muted type of satisfaction, but it filled some craving that he didn't even know he had. He stared out the window, content down to the bottom of his soul in a way that he would never be able to articulate. After he watched the lights blinking outside for a few minutes, Six opened the door and stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a fluffy white towel that seemed nearly blanket-sized. 

"Come here."

She pulled the towel higher over her shoulders.

"I don't want to drip on you."

As if a little water was going to stop him. All he had to do was give her a glance, and she complied. As she drew up next to him, she gave a small shiver.

"Why don't you lie down?"

She crawled up to the head of the bed, and he settled between her legs, tracing his hand along the side of her knee.

"Still acting bossy." She rearranged the pillows behind her, and her wet hair lay against her neck in dark tendrils. "Not much has changed." 

"I believe I asked politely, didn't I?" He ran his hand along the outside of her thigh, pushing the towel aside, skimming his finger back up the velvety inside of her leg and relishing her shiver against him.

"It's possible to do both. See? You just did it again." She smiled and pointed at him, and he clasped her hand in his and brought it to his mouth. The atmosphere between them had shifted, and there was no longer any hurry. He finally had her in his bed again, and he decided he was going to take all the time he wanted to enjoy it. He kissed the back of each of her fingers, with each perpetually-bruised knuckle just the same as he remembered. He lifted the bandages from over his mouth and left a trail of kisses up her wrist, up the inside of her elbow, so light that she looked perplexed as to what he was doing. She tried to sit up, but he held his hand over the center of her chest.

"Relax."

When her muscles slackened again, he pressed a kiss to her sun-dark shoulder. Collarbone. Trailing down the middle of her chest to her ribs. The full underside of each breast, back and forth a few times. By the time he got to the skin around her nipple, she was breathing hard. Other hand. Wrist. Elbow. Shoulder. Neck. He liked how dewy her throat felt against his mouth. He ran his fingers along her fluttering veins as if he could pacify them.

Usually, they were like flint meeting steel, sparking up quick and greedily stealing everything they could from each other, as if they had to finish before one half of his mind caught up with the other. This was different; fully and deeply considered. Drawing it out like this felt like it was outside the bounds of acceptability, and his doting felt indulgent and perverse. He fought that shame and lingered over her as if he were doing nothing wrong, as if they had every right and all the time in the world to be together. He wondered if anyone else had ever touched her this way before - probably not, and that realization gave him a thrill. She had experience, that much was obvious, but the idea that they could share this with each other and no one else was electrifying. 

"You're - " she stretched out to give him better access to her thigh. "Is this like some kind of payback for making you wait?"

It wasn't out of the ordinary for them, but for some reason, it bothered him that she could only conceive of his actions as some kind of tit-for-tat revenge, even if her comment was intended to be playful. He didn't want to be sardonic right now, even though it was easier. He cared for her. She should know it. 

"No. I want this to be enjoyable. Is it?"

A rare and fleeting look of shyness crossed her face before she shrugged against the pillow.

"Yeah. It's just...different. But good."

"I'm glad to see you."

For a second, she didn't respond. She couldn't be surprised at such an admission. In her letters, she'd written that she missed him so many times, so he knew she felt the same way. But he understood what she must be thinking: _Why say it here? Why now?_

"I'm glad to see you, too." She hooked her leg around him, her heel pressing leisurely against his lower back as she pulled him forward over her. It was flirtatious and relaxed and made him feel like a normal person for a few precious seconds. "Aw." She beamed up at him. "You're actually smiling."

"I'm not."

"You aren't as sneaky as you think you are. Your eyes are all crinkly. That's how I can tell." She reached up and swept her thumb across the skin under his eyes. "It was one of the first things I ever noticed once I started talking to you. It's very handsome."

He didn't know how to respond to that. The thoughts in his mind were so tumultuous that all he could do was stare down at her spread out against the blanket. Six was not liberal with her flattery for anyone or anything. He immediately wondered if she was simply saying it for his benefit. If that were the case, he wished she would say nothing at all rather than lie.

"Really." He tried not to sound too interested.

"Mhm." She dragged her heel along his spine.

"If I recall correctly, I could have sworn you hated me back then."

"Maybe a little. I still thought you were hot, though."

"Really?" He shifted his weight down onto his elbows. She rolled her eyes and squirmed underneath him.

"I'm embarrassed." She covered her face with her hands. "Do I really have to tell you this?"

"Yes."

"Fine." Her hands fell onto her chest. "Yes, really. I had it so bad for you the whole time when you were like 'hey, Six, let's go for long walks under the stars together, in a friend way, leave your old campsite and come sleep ten feet away from me, 'cause that's a normal and not-at-all suggestive thing that friends do-"

"You were injured. I had no improper intentions toward you," he objected.

"Says the guy who's got me naked right now."

He was about to retort, but she held her hand up to his chest to stop him. "Listen, I know. I'm sure your intentions were nothing but pure and holy, as usual, but mine..." The smile on her face was earnest, despite the sheepish tone in her voice. "Not so virtuous. Ugh. There I go. You make me spill all my secrets."

The rational part of his mind still didn't want to believe her, but he knew her well enough to consider that her most earnest statements tended to be the uncharacteristically graceless ones, and her demeanor right now was clumsy enough to overpower his doubts. Perhaps there was no way to be humble about it, but he still allowed himself to bask in his satisfaction.

"I had no idea." His hand found the side of her face, tilting it back up so she met his eyes. "Let me offer a sincere apology for my inattention."

She pushed her thigh up between his legs, making his teeth clench at the pressure dragging against his erection, already aching to be touched.

"I think I know a way you can make it up to me now."

He leaned forward and captured her lips in a kiss, lightly sucking on her bottom lip until her she shivered. The muscles of her stomach tensed, and he ran his hands along her side, up higher until he palmed her breast and she writhed up against him.

"We have to be quiet, okay?" Her voice dropped to a whisper. Without responding, he trailed his hand down lower, dipping it between her legs, making a pleased noise in his throat at how slick with arousal she was already. He slid his fingers into his mouth, earning a soft curse from her as he slipped his hand back down to touch her again.

"Faster?"

"No, it's good. Not so hard, though."

He lightened the pressure like she directed and shifted his weight to one side. The sharp quiver of breath she exhaled betrayed her composure, making him even stiffer against the soft skin of her inner thigh.

"You can slow down." 

"Like this?"

"Oh." Her voice was strained. "Yes. Like that."

He glided his fingers over her with a steady pace. The pain from her clinging to his shoulders was distracting, but judging by the clenching of her muscles underneath him, he had a feeling it would be over soon. In his ear, she breathed the bare honesties that he'd learned how to believe: how good he was at touching her, how much she wanted him, how often she thought about this while they were apart, confessing to him until her voice hitched and she bit down on the side of her fist.

"That's right," he coaxed as her hips started to grind up against his hand. "Sh. Be quiet." 

She rocked up harder, burying her face against his neck, stifling a tiny whimper. When she started shaking, he tightened his arm around her, holding her until all the tension left her body and her muscles loosened, and as she crashed back down from the orgasm, she stared at him with the same familiar bewildered adoration. Once she caught her breath, he pulled his fingers away to spread the residual wetness along his length with a few lazy strokes, and she arched her back up against him at the loss.

He settled back over her and kissed her temple. Just barely moving, he shifted forward until the head of his cock caught and pushed into her. She stretched around him so perfectly that he had to sigh. Finally getting inside her - so warm and pliant and ready for him - was nothing short of blissful. He'd almost forgotten how well they fit like this, how good they could be together.

"So, you missed me?" He murmured into her ear. Her mouth parted like she was about to answer, and he sank further into her, both of them shuddering in unison, and her hand gripped the pillow next to her head.

"Oh, yes. Fuck yes. Oh my God. Yes."

He started moving into her, slow and steady, and the soft sounds she made in response made the entire wait worth it. 

"I missed you, too."

She reached her hand out toward him, fumbling for something to hold onto, and he intertwined his fingers with hers. As he pressed her palm into the mattress, he wasn't sure what came over him. Normally, he never did things like that, but she squeezed his hand in return, so she must not have minded.

The undulation of her body moving with him as he gently pressed into her was so beautiful, and the expression on her face was pristine. Nothing else on Earth compared to the most earthly benediction of her dark eyes gazing up at him as they held each other tight; sustained only by the panted air they shared between their suffocating kisses. 

When she looked down between them, baring her neck against the pillow, he realized she was watching his cock thrust in and out of her, and he brushed his hand along the side of her face.

"Do you want to watch us, sweetheart?" The last word tumbled out of his mouth and he almost winced at his mistake. He had no idea where it came from or why he said it. They never used endearments in English, and certainly not in bed. It felt too saccharine; too sincere. He made a split-second decision to pretend like it didn't happen.

He caressed her cheek and tilted her head up, guiding her to look. She rose up on her elbows to follow him, tearing her gaze away and lifting it to meet his. The tiny breathless nod she gave was the most desperate impassioned thing he'd ever seen in his entire life. His rhythm faltered for a moment before he forced himself to regain it, not wanting to lose control yet. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in for more, and he let her even though it was painful.

"Yes, yes -" She thew her head back as he ran his mouth up along her neck. 

"Sh. Stop it." He pressed his lips to hers, trying to silence her. A strained cry escaped her, and he shoved a hand over her mouth before leaning in closer, enjoying the little sob of pleasure buried in her throat as she took him deeper. "You don't want anyone to hear, do you?" He whispered. She shook her head no. "Then be quiet."

The languorous pace was different, but he found himself enjoying it more than he expected. He could take in every detail: her hand clasping his as the bedframe groaned underneath them, her breath against his palm, how much he loved every single second of the simple and sublime pleasure of being with her. He could even tell himself the pain wasn't so horrible; and even if it was, he needed this too much to stop; he'd do anything for her. She continued her muffled rambling against his hand, heedless of the fact that he couldn't understand her frantic, breathless chanting.

The slow friction simmered up between them and he hiked her leg up higher as he lost his pace, the sharp creaks of the bed quickening. Her teeth stung hard into the heel of his hand as he bore down into her, whispering an assortment of devotions that took flight from his mind as soon as he said them - how good she felt, how beautiful she was with her legs spread for him. When he removed his hand from her mouth, he heard her choke his name out - his name, on her lips - and it was over. That was all it took to throw him into his own shattering release. He ducked his head against her neck, driving into her all the way, shutting his eyes as if the rest of the world ceased to exist for a few seconds.

The pain returned, always the first thing he felt. Then, he noticed her arms around him as she lightly traced her hands down his back. After a few seconds, he realized she was saying his name again, this time with a questioning upswing.

"Joshua? Are you alive?"

"Yes." He exhaled a stuttering breath against her neck.

"Oh. Good." Her voice was shaky.  

"I'm fine. I just - " He pushed himself up on his elbows. 

"Me too." Her fingertips skimmed along his shoulders. "Goddamn. I forgot where I was for a second there. But you were starting to crush me, so..." 

He mumbled his apologies and kissed her. Her soft little laugh against his mouth made everything feel so right that he nearly sighed in contentment. She looked breathtaking like this, lying back in angelic repose on the tangled white blankets with a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead, kiss-swollen lips, staccato heartbeat keeping time with his. 

As he leaned away and his mind slowly started to turn again, he realized he didn't pull out of her like he intended. She told him it was fine before, but it still made him nervous. They were the last two people on Earth who needed to worry about the possibility of a child right now. 

"Is my towel still on the bed?" She murmured into his ear.

"No. It's on the floor somewhere."

She shook her head in mock disappointment.

"You've only been here for like an hour and you're already gonna mess up my fancy sheets."

He ran his hand down the back of her thigh and gave her a light slap, making her twist away from him as she let out a sharp peal of laughter.

"Let she who is without sin cast the first stone." He gathered her knees in his arm and leaned over her, using his most serious voice despite the fact that she was still cracking up. "And if memory serves, I wasn't the one begging - loudly, might I add, despite her earlier directive - for -"

"Hey. Pointing fingers gets you nowhere." She cut him off with a smile and tapped him on the chest. "Go get the towel. Now. Please."

He tossed it at her and she caught it before it landed, giving him a cocky smirk that melted into a sweet smile. His heart felt so full in the simplest way possible, and the guilt that usually flooded over him after they slept together was hardly noticeable, for once. It shocked him to remember that he was tense about seeing her again. This felt right, like they were picking up where they left off months earlier. _This is how it should be all the time._ She rolled over to her side, and he swept back the hair that fell over the side of her face.

"I'm so tired," she mumbled. "I could fall asleep right here."

That was no surprise. It had to be well into the early hours of the morning by now. He went to the closet to look for extra blankets to spread over her, knowing she couldn't be talked into getting underneath the sheets already on the bed. To his surprise, when he turned around, she was already up and walking to the bathroom. With a sinking sensation in his stomach, he realized she was going to get her clothes.

"I should go now." She yawned and yanked her shirt down over her head. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

While he watched her dress, he tried to hide his dismay and keep his voice as nonchalant as possible.

"You don't want to stay?"

"I want to. I probably shouldn't, though." She stepped into her boots, catching herself against the wall as she swayed. "People come wake me up in the middle of the night to handle things all the time now. On the off-chance someone has an emergency, I should probably be in my room. Available. All that stuff." 

It struck him as slightly callous of her, but he forced himself to see her side of things. It didn't particularly concern him what other people thought, but he was not ignorant of the thorny situation Six found herself in. _I should be in my room,_ he repeated. _Alone. Not in bed with someone most people still consider an enemy._ He didn't like it, but he understood her reservations and responsibilities. This was not Zion anymore. Perhaps certain things had to change between them. He wasn't sure how happy he would be with that, but he decided not to press the issue over something so relatively minor. 

"I see. Goodnight, Six."

"See you bright and early tomorrow." She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. "We have work to do." 

She shut the door behind her so carefully that all he heard was the click of the latch. As he laid the blankets aside and sat on the bed, it occurred to him that she hadn't been particularly forthcoming on what exactly it was they were going to be doing. He was still mildly curious, but he supposed his questions would be answered soon enough. 


	44. XLIV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for: very brief mentions of suicide, rape, and torture
> 
> adding this note but: next update will be sunday probably!

For once, it was Joshua who underestimated Six. She told him she would see him bright and early, which, knowing her, he assumed meant vaguely around ten, but to his shock, she knocked on his door at half-past six, holding a mug of coffee and sporting enormous bags under her eyes.

"I never get to sleep in anymore." She tossed the comment over her shoulder by way of explanation as they took the stairs down. "I have to be across town at nine, and I still have to show you where everything is, and I need to look over some paperwork - "

"Paperwork?"

"Yep. Today it's about our caravan tax situation, which I don't care about even a little bit, but I've had that lady at Crimson Caravans breathing down my neck for weeks - I'm really just gonna snap one of these days, I swear." She jokingly made the sign of the cross over her chest. It caught him off guard to see her making such a gesture. It was nothing his people did, but other faithful groups performed it, and he was familiar with the practice. Six opened the door and ushered him out of the stairwell. "Anyway. Here we are."

Joshua wasn't exactly sure what Six did here, but handling tax negotiations certainly wasn't what he expected. She was full of surprises.

"What is it that you're attempting to do, long-term?" He barely understood her involvement in the military side of things, let alone the civic responsibilities she seemed to have taken on. She let out a long sigh.

"I'm trying to steer a sinking ship. And for me, the only term there is ends with that battle at the dam. Let's leave it at that."

"How did you find yourself in this position?"

"That's a long story. We should save it for later."

After descending the stairwell for a brief and confusing tour of the building, they ended up in the elevator. Six jabbed the twenty-second button and yawned again.

"This is where everyone else stays, including me. Also has a kitchen and a meeting room. Most of the time, we hang out here. It's one floor below you."

Six continued talking, but Joshua was no longer listening. The doors of the elevator were mirrored. It was the first time he'd actually looked at himself in a real mirror in a long time. He stared into his own eyes, the only part of his entire body still recognizable from before he was set on fire. The alienation was almost disorienting, like he wasn't sure which one of them was real: that man, or this one. He didn't notice that Six stopped talking until his eyes met hers in the mirror. 

"A missionary and a mailman walk into an elevator. It sounds like the set-up to a joke."

Joshua was aware that she was intentionally trying to distract him, but he decided to allow it. He stared at their reflections as if they were a pair of strangers he was sizing up. All he saw was a young woman with a springtime smile standing beside a terror.

"After all of this, you still consider yourself a courier?" He certainly didn't think of himself as a missionary anymore. She frowned like she was giving it some thought.

"What else would I be?"

He stared at her in the mirror and wondered what her life was like before they met. Even when he first met her, an unshakable solitude clung to her like a fog. He was inclined to attribute it to her memory loss, but he couldn't be sure. It was possible she'd always been that way. Envisioning what her home or parents might have been like proved difficult. It was easier to imagine she'd sprung from the desert with a rifle in her hand and a cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth, ready to take on the world.

He knew better than to trust those notions, of course. No matter how much she wanted to evade it, she was someone's child, as was he. Somewhere, she might have family and friends who were wondering where she went and distraught over why she never returned.

His thoughts turned to his own family, and as tragic as their loss was, at least he had a concrete answer for their endings. Their physical bodies were all dead, but they would be resurrected and reunited someday. That certainty eased the blow of death for him and his people. He watched the reflection of Six brushing her hair in front of her ear, and for a second, he understood the world as she must see it: a murky, ambiguous place best navigated with guesswork and half-shrugs, with no overarching order or reason to be found. Simply thinking about it made his chest feel tight. If that were his way of seeing things, he'd go mad within a day.

The elevator dinged, and Six leaned over to hit the button to keep the doors closed.

"I have to go now. Is there anything else you need?"

"No."

"I know this sucks. Thanks for not complaining."

Six released the button, and they pulled apart as the doors opened. She was off like a shot down the hall, and he went the opposite direction toward the stairs. The thought of staying in the elevator alone didn't appeal to him in the slightest.

A man he hadn't seen yet was approaching from the opposite way. When their eyes fell upon each other, he stopped dead in his tracks.

"Legate." The cold hatred in his voice told him this must be the one Six warned him about earlier. She gave him a brief explanation, saying that he was not to speak to him, and if something happened, she wouldn't care who started it. That morning, Joshua brushed her off, but it appeared that her caution was well-timed.

"Huh. Last time I saw you, it was down my scope. Pretty sure I helped my buddy land a bullet in your shoulder."

Now that he mentioned it, Joshua remembered that one. The snipers shot him near Nelson, and he had a vivid memory of clamping his teeth down on a rag dirtied with the metallic tang of blood while a medic pried out the bullet, but he didn't need those details to understand. The red beret on the man's head was enough. First Recon. The reason for his hostility was obvious. Their unit wasted an untold amount of time and resources trying to kill him. It was a shame that after all that training, they still couldn't aim properly, but that was no fault of his.

"And yet, here I am."

"You actually proud of that?"

Joshua stayed silent, trying to remind himself to accept whatever consequences his past actions brought him.  _Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also._ The man advanced toward him, and Joshua immediately drew himself up, bristling.

"You gonna swing on me, you son of a bitch? Do it." He stepped closer. "Give me an excuse to put you down right now."

Then, he started thinking of all the possible places he could hide this this man's body.

 _Six would find out anyway._ Even a broken nose just to teach him a lesson would likely result in Six never speaking to him again. He took a deep breath and tried to douse the rage coursing through his body. He wondered who this was to her, and why she was so emphatic in her instructions not to harm him.

"Courier Six asked me to leave you alone. I'll respect her wishes. You should do the same." _If you know what's good for you._ Joshua managed to bite back the threat, but it slithered into his tone anyway. Rather than defusing the situation, it just made the man angrier.

"Something I want to make real clear." His voice dropped low, trembling. "If you ever lay a hand on her or anyone else here, I will kill you. If you ever even look at her wrong, I will kill you."

There was no exaggeration. The sniper would have no compulsions about attempting to murder him. Joshua spent enough time around men hardened by combat to know that. Years ago, he was the exact same way, and that part of himself would never fully go away. He felt a twinge of recognition, like all pretenses of the civilization around them were stripped back, like they were a breath away from spilling blood. 

"I don't know what lies you've told her to make her trust you. But I know what you really are." He took a step closer, so close that Joshua could see the hard line next to his mouth. "Your life is worthless to me. You're not a man. You're not human."

It took every ounce of his self control to stop his fist from connecting with the sniper's nose. The physical strain of turning around felt like a thousand pounds weighing down on him.

"Coward. Dog. Run away." The man called down the hallway. "You'll get what's coming to you, in the end."

 _I will,_ Joshua thought. _We all will._

He took the elevator back up. When he made it back to his room, he walked into the bathroom and flicked the light on. In Zion, there was only sunlight and moonlight and firelight, bathing everything in a forgiving glow. The harsh fluorescent lighting here was so different. He laid his scissors and fresh bandages on the counter in front of him, and performed the daily routine of removing his bandages: drawing out the process as long as he possibly could, letting the pain hit him in waves that made his jaw clench and his eyes water up. This time, there was a new element to the ritual. He stood in front of the mirror, examining every inch of his exposed skin as he revealed it. He hadn't done that in a long time, but it felt right.

The man's words ripped through the veil he'd thrown over the existence that coiled deep in his heart and constricted him from within unless he held a vigilant watch over his thoughts and feelings. In his Legion years, all he had to do was look away, and allow it to consume him entirely. He remembered how he used to appear like everyone else; an ordinary man with a cesspool of sin festering in place of a heart beneath the unmarred skin of his chest, all disguised behind an ordinary face.

He used to hear that observation so often that he brushed it off without heed. _H_ _e's not even human,_ his soldiers would whisper. The others - the people screaming or crying at him, pleading for mercy he'd long forgotten  - would phrase it a little differently and say he was a monster. At the heart of the matter, the words were getting at the same horror - a living, breathing violation of God's natural order, an abomination walking on two legs. He found a rich satisfaction in causing that fear, unsurpassed by any other pleasure on Earth.

Most of the time, he knew it was misguided nonsense. At his best and his worst, he was still a man. Repudiating his personhood was not enough to make it untrue. However, there were weak days when he succumbed, when he told himself that there was something so wrong with him that the entire human race could forsake him. As he stared into his own eyes, reflected back from a monstrous face, giving in to the urge to acknowledge the abomination in front of him did nothing to quell his discomfort.

A monster who knows he is a monster is worse still.

For the next week, Joshua sat at a table for hours to exhume and dissect his monstrosities in the clearest detail he could provide, while Six sat on the table, asking questions, and the doctor - Arcade - frowned down at him. He was the only other person Joshua regularly saw. Six normally met with large groups of people, but when Joshua was present, she kept it to the three of them. Their meetings always had a solemn clinical atmosphere, like some middle ground between legal testimony, medical exam, and confession of sins. Joshua thought about asking Six if the two of them could do this alone, but then he pictured having to stare into her faultless brown eyes as he explained the details of his history, and he realized that might be worse somehow. At least with the three of them, they could maintain the veneer of detachment.

Almost every day, he looked over Six's information, drew out maps, and offered his best predictions and suggestions - what moves the Legion and the NCR would make next, what their defensive capabilities and supply routes might look like, how best to counter them. At times, he didn't have enough information and could only speculate, but they seemed to find his assistance useful nonetheless. This aspect of warfare was something he never enjoyed much, even back in the Legion, but it was easy enough to slip back into.

Each morning he confronted the empire he helped build with his hands and his gun and his blood, and set to dismantling it with nothing but his words. It was the righteous thing to do, and it satisfied some need to strike back at Caesar, but as he stared at the glass of water and the pen in front of him, a tiny part of him understood how Judas might have felt in the garden of Gethsemane. Even when they were fleeting, those feelings disturbed him to his core in a way that few things could anymore.

When they finished for the day, Six always seemed like she was being cautious with him.

"You okay?" She moved her hand closer to his on the table, and he pulled it back to fix his sleeve. He always had to curb his instinct to touch her now. She wouldn't want anyone else seeing them act so familiar.

"I'm fine." And he was. He wasn't fragile, and he didn't need to be coddled.

At first, Joshua thought the doctor hated him, but now he pinned his feelings more accurately as disapproval and disgust shot through with a streak of curiosity. If they were in the same room, Arcade was usually staring at him as one would be wary of a coiled-up venomous snake, still capable of unfurling and striking at any moment. But Joshua found his attention drawn back to him, too. Whenever Six briefly left the room, they stared at opposite walls and ignored the taut silence pulling between them. At times, Arcade would shift his weight or clear his throat in a way that made Joshua think he was going to finally say something to him, but he never actually did.

Ultimately, what these people thought of him was not his concern. He wasn't here to make friends.

Six was another issue altogether. He was beginning to realize her appearance the first morning was not an anomaly; she looked exhausted every single day. Outside of his bedroom, she rarely ever smiled or laughed. Sometimes when he talked to her, he got the sense that she wasn't actually listening, which was abnormal behavior for her. She was usually an astute observer of the storms she passed through, but now, she was in the eye of the hurricane. Everything was happening around her, turning and turning with no end in sight. 

Every time Joshua saw her, she held a gun or a pen or a cigarette or a drink, always a drink, always rushing into one room or out of another. A steady stream of people came in and out to talk or negotiate or yell at her, and she endured it all with nothing more than a composed stare. Not once did he see her raise her voice in return, or lash out in any display of viciousness. He'd almost forgotten how calm she could be, as if nothing truly bothered her at all.

Almost every night, she knocked on his door, holding her helmet and looking up at him with empty eyes, like the light in them flicked off as soon as no one else was watching her. He'd let her in and she would go straight to the shower to wash off the mixture of sweat and dust and blood she'd accumulated over the day. Some nights, when he buried his head against her neck, he could still smell the scent of coppery blood and cigarette smoke clinging to her hair. 

She didn't always come to him for sex. There were plenty of times when she came by just to spend a couple of hours talking or reading together before she went to sleep, which pleased him more than she probably knew. Sometimes, she would rub her temple and ask him to turn off the light because she had a headache. If she was admitting it out loud, he knew the pain must be serious.

"I've always had them. Even in Zion, sometimes." She told him that one night when they were lying in bed together in the darkness. Sweat covered the side of her face, and her eyes were shut tight. The best he could do was stay next to her and say a small prayer for her as he watched the faint glow of the casino lights blinking in patterns on the wall. 

"Were they always this intense?"

"Uh." She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. "I don't think so." 

On the evenings when they kept the lights off, more often than not, she would fall asleep next to him, but he couldn't bring himself to wake her up until early morning, even though he knew he should tell her to go back to her room. She never commented on it, but would instead gather her things and leave, closing the door quietly behind her as if she had never been there. 

One day, she told him that they were all going to meet later that day and discuss some plans with everyone. He thought nothing of it, but a few hours later, when the group he met the first night all filed into the meeting room. The sniper was sitting right next to Six, staring at Joshua as if his eyes could burn holes through him. Then, Joshua saw what Six was holding in her hand, and it felt like his heart could have stopped.

She held up a cord. His vision tunneled in on the mark at the end it as it swung from her fingers like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, until his heartbeat barreled past its steady tempo.

"Why do you have that?" 

"Vulpes Inculta found me here on the Strip and gave it to me. Caesar asked me to meet with him, and I'm gonna go."

"Why?" The word choked out of his dry throat. 

"There's something I have to do near the Fort, and this is the only way to get inside."

"No." He shook his head. "You can't."

"We already had that conversation before you got here." Her tone was steely. "I'm going, and you're here to help me figure out how I'm gonna pull it off."

"I will do no such thing." He stood up, hardly even aware of what was happening around him. Sifting through the emotions running around his head was impossible. Shock and anger and fear all muddled together until they submerged his conscious thoughts. 

"Can I have a word with you in private?" Six's voice was calm, and she was already walking toward him. 

"No."

"I want five minutes. Now. Please." She pointed at the door to the side. He might have resented her for ordering him around, but he was in such a daze that he set off toward the vague direction she was going. She threw the door open, and he nearly bumped into her as he followed her inside. When she flicked on the light and shut the door behind them, he saw that it wasn't another room at all, but a narrow closet. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, giving a few weak flickers into the darkness.

"This is a broom closet."

"Yeah, I realize that now. It's too late to turn around." She waved her hand. "Anyway, can you pull it together? Please?"

The words came back to him, and he took a deep breath.

"This is not what I anticipated when you asked me to come here. I was under the impression you needed military advice."

"This is military advice." Her hand smacked into a broomstick, and she jerked down to catch it before it fell on their feet. "Why are you so worked up about this?"

"Six." He leaned forward, bringing them closer in the already-cramped space. "I don't particularly want to be here. It's not pleasant for me. But I wanted to help you, so I came anyway. I know you can defend yourself. What I will not do is enable you to take pointless risks. If you want to commit suicide, there are easier ways to die."

"You are so out of line right now." A sharp edge in her voice sliced the air between them, and he saw her nostrils flare. 

"You're in over your head." He reached for her forearm. "Why would you want to walk right into their camp like a lamb for slaughter? Do you know how painful it is to die from crucifixion? How long it takes?"

She turned her head away, silent with anger. As she shifted her weight away from him, a box tumbled off of the shelf.

"That's if Caesar kills you outright. He might imprison you instead, and you will have no control over what happens to you. There will be no escape. Do you understand?" He tightened his grip on her arm, wishing she would just look at him. "Is that a risk you're willing to take?"

"Just say it," she hissed. "Possibly torture, rape - all that shit. I know. You don't have to act all outraged and delicate about it all of a sudden. We both know that's exactly what you mean."

It was no genuine invocation of repentance; it was merely a calculated strike to leave him with no reasonable defense, and it worked. The harm that might befall her was entirely of his creation, but even the most terrible people were capable of affection and concern for those they loved. Denying him that was convenient for her right now, but that didn't mean it was true. He exhaled a shaky breath and let go of her arm.

"Then let me remind you. The consequences of defeat will be severe."

"I know." 

"Why are you doing this?" Despite his best efforts, desperation broke into his voice, but he had no idea how to make her understand. It was as if he was speaking to a brick wall.

"Because I'm responsible for making sure all of the people in this city don't get enslaved. There's a bigger picture here than just me."

"That's not what I'm asking, and you know it." His voice dropped lower. "Why did you want to do this in the first place? Why are you here?"

"We can talk about that later. I have a job to do right now."

"You need a new excuse. That one is wearing thin." The anger was turning cold now. "And your professed humanitarian concerns never quite convince me, either. What about the people already around you? How do you think your family feels right now?"

She took a step closer and pointed at him. It was a fury he had never seen on her before. There was very little that ever unnerved him, but the way she was staring at him came close.

"Don't say anything about that to me ever again." The broom fell down and she shoved it out of her way with a violent crack against the wall. "Are we fucking finished here?"

"For now. This isn't over."

"Fine."

She flung the door open and shot him a final fiery glance. He stared at her shoulders as she stepped back into the room.

"Okay. Back to business." To her credit, she sounded smooth and collected as ever. That didn't stop the members of her council from staring at her, flabbergasted. _They probably heard us,_ Joshua realized. He took his seat, stewing silently, while the rest of the group debated about when and how she was going to get there.

"Do I understand this correctly?" Joshua interrupted after only about a minute of half-listening to their deliberation. "You want to go alone?"

Six shot him a look like he was going to pay for bringing it up later, but he hardly cared at this point.

"Yep. There's no reason for anyone else to put themselves in danger."

"Yeah, hold on." The scribe frowned. "Don't you want any kind of backup?"

"Once I'm in there, whatever happens, happens. If they want to kill me, nothing's going to stop them."

"Unbelievable," Joshua grumbled. Six stared at him.

"Guys." Her eyes cut over at him to let him know that she really meant _Joshua._ "This is a risk. But the payoff...if I get into that bunker, we can take the Dam. Flat out. We can nearly win this thing right now."

"And if you die, what will we do?" Joshua folded his arms across his chest. _What will I do?_

"How the fuck am I supposed to know? I'll be dead."

"Come on, Six," Arcade chided. "Don't act like that. He's asking a valid question. We're all here to help you. What should we do if you don't come back?"

She rubbed the side of her temple and put her hand over her mouth, pausing for a second like she was thinking.

"In that case, I have to decide whether to slide my resources to the NCR or not. I'll have to think about that and draw up a plan. But as for you all, personally? Whatever you want, I guess." She looked around at them. "Move on. Go back to what you were doing before this. I know you all have lives."

An uncomfortable beat of silence passed before Arcade looked down at his clipboard and resumed talking.

"Anyway, moving on to motive. This is an interesting move on Caesar's part, to put it mildly. Why would he possibly invite you to talk?"

"To kill you." The sniper was sitting upright in his chair, glaring at Joshua, probably imagining all the ways he could dismember him.

"No." Joshua put his hands on the table, glaring right back. Two could play at that game. "I'd imagine that he sees you as a piece to be acquired for his game of chess. He's interested in you because in his fight against the NCR, you're an unknown quantity." He returned his eyes to Six. "But if you refuse to assist him, I don't know what to expect. Perhaps he'd let you walk out. Perhaps not. It's not something I can predict." _Or control._

"Okay. Put me against him."

"What?"

"We have plenty of information about his army, his tactics, all that. But what is he like as a person? I'm sure you know something about him that could help me figure out how I should approach him."

Despite his internal protest, his brain took the challenge up all too readily. It was like a hundred little things he'd subconsciously stored, all flooding out at the prodding of her question.

"Edward is well-educated. He's intelligent, and he's always planning several steps ahead." He hated the words even as they were rolling off of his tongue. "And he always believes he's the smartest person in the room." Joshua looked down at his hands. "Let me amend that statement. He always needs to prove he is. And you..." He tried to see her through someone else's eyes, as if she were nobody important: just another soldier he was appraising for battle. "You are much less conspicuous. He will be ready to assume you're not as smart as him, so playing to that weakness of his would benefit you. Act ignorant. Flatter him. Don't let him know how much you truly know."

If, in some awful reversal of fate, he was at Caesar's side right now deliberating what to do with Six, he knew exactly how it would go. Edward would want to talk to her. He'd be saying how useful she could be, how unpredictable: a single person who came up out of nowhere, who eluded their attempts to assassinate her and was capable of sending scores of their best men scattering. If he could not destroy her, he would want to know how he could use her to his advantage.

In that life, Joshua would tell Edward to forget the games, put a bullet in her skull at the soonest opportunity, and be done with it. He never shared their predilection for toying with their enemies.

"I see what you're saying. I have to sucker him, basically, into thinking he's getting whatever it is that he wants out of me. Maybe even agree to an alliance to save my skin, then get the hell out." Six continued talking, an edge of excitement creeping into her voice, but Joshua wasn't following it. He stared at his hands against the wooden table in front of him, praying that he could stop this mistake from happening. 

"Well. It's settled, then." Arcade sighed. "Alea iacta est." 

Joshua looked up from the table.

"She is no Caesar."

"Thankfully." The doctor returned his glance, uneasy. Six rested her hand on the back of her chair and tapped it to get their attention.

"Okay. Is there anything else I should do for now?"

"Last rites," Joshua snapped. "Since your family is Catholic, if I remember correctly."

Complete silence enveloped them. Six's mouth was half-open, her hand clenching the back of the chair so hard that he could see the strain of the muscles in her forearm.

"Okay. That's everything for today." Her eyes stayed on Joshua. He turned around and walked out, certain that her eyes were still fixed on his back, but he knew he had to get out of that room.


	45. XLV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! This chapter was originally posted as #46, but I swapped it out with the next one 'cause it made more sense.
> 
> Sorry for any confusion and thanks for the patience...it's a work in progress...we're all just along for the shitshow together aren't we.

The dirt road shimmered in the late afternoon heat, and even though there was a very real possibility Six was was walking toward her own execution, there was a spring in her step. Something about a long, deserted expanse of road in front of her always lifted her spirits. She picked up a baseball bat from a dead bandit a few miles back, and she rolled it in back and forth in her hands as she listened to the coyotes howling up the mountain. The rubble from the crumbling road crunched underneath her feet, and she bent down to scoop up another piece, sunbaked through centuries to a dusty gray color. As she turned it over in her hand, she thought about all the other people who might have passed along this road before her.

Two hundred years ago, lots of them were probably headed out this way to Lake Mead. She pictured the smiling families she saw in tattered old-world advertisements, swimming or fishing or lying out on towels, taking pictures of each other and enjoying the sun. 

 _I know how to swim._ A knot formed in her stomach. When she was younger, someone must have taught her how. She wondered if maybe her mother or older sibling took her down to the banks of some river while they washed clothes, or if it was her father, and he took her to the beach just to relax like the families in the pictures she found. If there were still places where people were happy like that, she hadn't found any evidence, and she'd seen enough places to know.

She tossed the rock in the air in front of her and swung the baseball bat. The crack of stone on wood echoed between the cliffs, and the chunk of rubble soared out ahead. ED-E atomized it before it hit the ground.

He was with her on the first road she ever walked, and if this was going to be her last, it was nice to have him at her side. Having clean little bookends to structure her messy year on earth made it all feel contained, like the seemingly random things that happened at least had the decency to follow the rise and fall of a story. Real life so rarely provided that kind of satisfaction. Maybe in five or twenty or fifty years, someone would even be telling this story around a campfire somewhere. If she played her cards right tomorrow, it would have a hopeful ending, and whoever was telling it would be a free person in free land, surrounded by family or friends or amicable strangers. If she didn't have any people of her own to remember her, that thought was some kind of consolation. For now, it was just her and ED-E again.

"Remember when we first met?" She tilted her head up at him. Everything was so shitty back then. They were always alone, always sleeping on the side of the road, and she was hungry and dirty and in constant pain from her head; and he was dinged up and shorting out all the time, but somehow, they made it. "You've stuck with me longer than anyone else. Thanks for coming with me."

The robot bobbed up and down like he was nodding along with her words. It was always easier to say things to him than it was to actual people, as if somehow, beneath the metal casing, he understood it all and she didn't need to worry about how to explain herself. Maybe she was being silly. As Veronica once gently pointed out, he wasn't programmed to have feelings or opinions.

"So." Six tilted the bat against her shoulders. "When all of this is over, where are you going next?"

He beeped, and she looked down at her feet. A deep green bush bloomed up from the cracked ground, speckled with a few white flowers. Six snapped off a sprig and tucked it in her pocket. 

"Of course, you can stay with me as long as you want." Her fingers absently ran over the stem until her thumb snagged on a thorn. She gave a slight jolt away from the pinprick of pain, and her trance was broken. "If all goes well. But we need a backup plan. There's no way to tell how this is gonna end, you know?"

 

Later that night, Six found herself heading toward a fire burning against a sheltered outcropping off the side of the road. She preferred to keep to herself when she was traveling, but at times, she stopped to talk to other people. It wasn't exactly her idea of a good time, but it was the best way to get information about what was going on in a location, and she often got news from firsthand sources before it was reported on the radio. Besides, the pounding in her head was flaring up again, and she was relieved at the excuse to stop.

She raised her hand and waved at the group, and one of the figures waved back. After they did their initial dance of mutual suspicion, she approached them. This far out on the frontier, being trigger happy was a good way to survive, and Six wouldn't blame anyone for shooting on sight.

"Howdy, mister." A stately woman with steel-gray hair rose to her feet and hooked her thumbs through her belt loops. Six didn't miss the enormous hunting revolver on her hip, and she made a mental note not to piss this one off. "Who're you with?"

She meant Legion or NCR or a caravan company or one of the families on the Strip. Six unlatched her helmet and lifted it off.

"Nobody. Just a courier."

The weathered skin on the woman's forehead wrinkled up.

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm on a job, and lookin' to turn in for the night. You got room for one more?"

The group turned out to be mostly merchants from further east, which explained why they didn't recognize her, but there was one couple traveling to New Vegas to resettle. They actually had a kid with them - a cheerful little girl who was turning rocks over to chase the bugs scattering underneath. It gave Six an uneasy pit in her stomach to watch the parents holding hands and whispering to each other. A desert filled with vicious animals and gangs and bandits was no place for a family. Dragging people you loved through here was basically asking for something tragic to happen. 

_Maybe they're risking it because they know whatever they're running from is worse._

Six stayed quiet, but listened carefully to the bits of information the group was sharing. Apparently, there had been attacks on Legion camps close to the old US-Mexico border, with semi-organized groups whittling away at their territory from the south. Turns out a bunch of fed-up ranchers with carbines were causing Caesar's boys more than enough trouble. _Dale duro,_ she mentally cheered, and said a silent not-prayer that they would be successful. On a darker note, closer to home, it sounded like what was left of Camp Searchlight had been wiped out by the Legion. If she wanted to be calculating about it, letting the NCR and the Legion wear themselves out against each other was good news for her. Maybe the NCR's inability to hold their own damn positions would give them pause about throwing more recruits at their problems.

If the Legion would incinerate New Vegas in one blaze, then the NCR would slowly choke the life out of it. She'd take them over the Legion, but as far as she was concerned, they were just another group of people in uniforms trying to exploit the Mojave for their own benefit. The republic was failing at every aspect of war and peacekeeping that went beyond handing out guns to a bunch of guys and telling them who to aim at. The incompetence of the commanders irritated her to no end, but she didn't have an ounce of blame for the kids they'd ripped off of farms out west and sent here to hold some dam they didn't care about. They wanted to live and go home. It was only human.

The Legion was another story. She wondered what was so magnificent and amazing about Caesar that every man in his army, all the way down to the recruits, would obey him to their deaths.  _I guess I'll find out tomorrow._  Six was pulled out of her thoughts when one of the men leaned forward and began to speak to the people around her.

"Some gals tending bar in Arizona told me they been hearing about the Burned Man again."

"They've been talking about him for years." The gray-haired woman crossed her arms. "It's just an old wives' tale."

"And you?" The man nodded at Six once he realized she was listening to them. "You ever heard the story?"

She was a courier, and if there was something every courier knew, it was stories. She'd walked nearly every road and heard every damn tale in this desert, and this time, she even held the grain of truth in the midst of the myth - that right now, the flesh-and-blood person that had been sublimated into the Burned Man was alive. If she had to guess, he was probably sitting up in bed and frowning with concentration at some old book while he waited for her to come home. _Not home,_ she corrected. Just the place she'd found herself for now. 

"No." Six replied. "Who is he?"

The man lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"Well, according to the rumors, he's a vengeful spirit that climbed out of the Grand Canyon, and now he haunts the desert."

"You don't say?" Six leaned her chin on her hand. "And what do you think?"

The man paused, and tilted his hat back.

"I've been trading in these parts for decades, and I've heard a lot of tall tales. But let me tell you - there's none like this one. I been through a few Legion camps. Mention him, and it scares 'em shitless. That doesn't mean I believe it. But it doesn't mean I don't, either, y'know?"

"Yeah." Six wrapped her arms around her knees and stared into the fire. "I know what you mean."

The rest of the conversation hummed around her, and she clutched her knees to her chest. If she couldn't be alone, she supposed being surrounded by strangers who didn't know her was the next best thing. She closed her eyes and listened to the crackling of the fire, and felt the desert wind nipping at her face, and while the group talked about the Burned Man, her thoughts fell on Joshua Graham. 

 _I wish he was here._  Staring down what easily could have been her last night on earth, she should have been having some kind of poetic reflection or something, but that was basically it. It was an uncomplicated, powerful desire to have him sitting beside her, because things always seemed better that way. If she asked, he'd probably even hold her hand, but she wouldn’t ask, because she wouldn't want him to know she was scared, and goddamn she was so scared, and it wasn't really of the fact that she might die, but of the idea that she didn't know exactly how or when it would happen, and the second she crossed the river tomorrow, it was all out of her control.  

The conversation moved on, and she was barely paying attention until one of the younger men touched the side of her arm. She tried not to flinch away at the surprise.

"And what about you?" He gave her a teasing smile. "I'm sure you got someone at home."

She realized they'd been talking about their spouses and their partners. It felt wrong, but she figured there was no real harm in lying to them. _This is what people do,_ she told herself. They talk about their families and their homes and their hopes for the future. For just a moment, she wanted to pretend she was one of them.  

"Yeah. I do. He's mad as hell at me right now for taking off, but work is work, you know?"

The old man next to her laughed.

"Oh, I hear you. Back when I was driving brahmin, I used to say the same thing to my wife."

"You're a courier, right?" The young man took a swig from his canteen. "That's rough work. Can't quite imagine it, myself. What does your better half do?"

 _The best lies are half-truths,_ she reminded herself. 

"He's a translator. Smart guy, but not stuck-up, and easy to have a conversation with. He can find something interesting in just about any subject you can think of. I could probably spend forever talking to him." The stars glittered overhead, and the warm feeling in her chest surged higher. "I mean, I handle myself just fine, but he makes things better. We pick up each other's slack. It's -"  She cut herself off, suddenly feeling like she'd said too much and been too revealing of a soft spot that she should have kept hidden. "Um. I don't know. Yeah. It's good."

"That's nice." The woman commented like she wanted to reassure her. "It sounds like you're lucky."

"Yeah. I am." She wrapped her arms around her knees, still feeling her ears heating up against the cool night air. It was so messed up, but for a second, she allowed herself to give in and imagine what it would be like if all of the things she said were actually real. She'd make it out alive and unharmed, as if this were any other job, and she'd go back late at night, dead-tired, fumbling with the key to the front door of some house - small, run-down, but something she could call her own. The light would cut on inside while Joshua opened the door for her. In her head, he would have stayed up late to see her in. He'd still be annoyed at her, but the relief in his eyes as he squeezed her hand would tell her none of it mattered; all was forgiven. She'd take off her clothes and wash her face and crawl in bed next to him and they'd talk for a while as the moonlight streamed in the window, and even though she was exhausted, she'd know she could sleep in as long as she wanted tomorrow morning and he'd be there and everything would be okay. In that version of things, he was a constant in her life like the northern star, a fixed point always guiding her home.

 _Get it together,_ she reprimanded, appalled at her own ridiculousness. Maybe the person who used to live in this body had a life like that once, but Six clearly didn't. _He wouldn't want that,_ she told herself. _I sure don't._ It was sort of funny, even, trying to picture herself settling down in one place, peaceful and steady. Life was a fight, and it wasn't going to let her out of its jaws anytime soon. She'd been fighting nearly every day since she woke up in Goodsprings, and at this point, it was all she knew how to do. She could daydream all she wanted, but it would never change reality, and as she listened to the soft hum of chatter around her, she lifted her eyes to the stars and reminded herself to keep moving on and keep fighting, because stopping meant drowning, and drowning meant death, and it wasn't quite her time - not yet. She had a job to do.

 

 

For her journey to hell on earth, Six couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather. When she crossed the river, the sun was just breaking over the horizon, its golden reflection dancing in lazy ripples on the water. Six ran her thumb over the smooth gray stone she'd picked up from the shoreline. A boy with doleful eyes was steering the boat from Cottonwood Cove, his skinny freckled arms tugging hard against the oars as they glided toward the main camp. The legionaries she'd killed were all grown men - at least, she thought they were, she wasn't so sure now - but there was no way this kid was older than fifteen. He'd probably cut her throat as fast as any of the others, but it didn't matter. He shouldn't be here. 

As she was getting off the boat, she noticed the boy was staring at her, nervously pulling at the edge of his uniform. The gesture was so childlike that she wanted to grab the nearest legionary and scream at him; to ask why they couldn't all see that he was just a kid and he should be at home with his parents. 

They took her guns and hunting knives and the platinum chip away. She'd successfully hidden her rosary and a tiny pocketknife against her body, and she supposed that was all she'd have to work with if things went wrong here. ED-E was allowed to stay with her, but he earned her several strange glances from the legionaries as she made her way up the hill. As she glanced back, she realized there were women walking around the camp, too, carrying boxes or laundry or bags of supplies between the tents. Not a single one was armed in any way. Plenty of them were wearing collars, and as far as she could tell, some appeared to be explosive. She'd seen them before, and they worked by forcing the wearers to stay within a certain radius under the threat of instant death. _If they ever put one of those things on me, I'd run and let it take my head off._ She knew things were bad here, of course, but seeing it all with her own eyes made it sink in more fully. _What the fuck, Joshua?_  She silently interrogated, as if he'd ever have an answer that made her stop asking the question.

The suspicious glances the women cast her as she walked through the camp didn't even bring her sadness. She was past that point. She was frigid with anger. Her mind turned with daydreams of what it might be like to bring Boone here and hunt down every single man they could catch. 

 _This place would burn so easily,_ she observed. The tents would go up in flames like kindling. She remembered what Joshua said about there being no feasible way to evacuate the camp quickly. Even a small unit could cause a lot of damage. _But the women and children can't escape either,_ her brain reminded her, and her frustration grew. They'd be trapped too, and with the bomb collars, they had no chance at running. Nothing could ever be fucking easy for her. By the time she reached the top of the hill, she felt numb to everything, even the flames of her elaborate revenge fantasy. Her blood crawled through her veins like glacial water. She needed to stay sharp and focus. The smallest misstep could result in disaster. _Breathe. Be calm._

The guard escorting her stopped outside of the tent.

"Remove your helmet in the presence of the Son of Mars, profligate."

Reluctantly, she unlatched the ranger helmet and lifted it off. The man barely raised his eyebrows, but she picked up the surprise when he saw her face.

"You may enter." He drew the tent open, and she tightened her grip on her helmet and stepped inside. Six told herself she wasn't going to be scared, but as she stepped forward, the feeling of her heart pounding up in her throat nearly drowned out everything else.

Six was no stranger to having enemies. In a way, breaking them down was how she measured out her life. _One - Benny. Two - House._ Standing before the red-draped throne, she'd finally reached the apex of her list - _three, Caesar._ It was really him. After a year of unofficial warfare, she was finally staring at the man she'd sworn she was going to kill next.

"So the Mojave's biggest pain in the ass finally decided to stop by." Caesar's voice boomed through the tent, and she instinctively tightened her grip on the helmet in her hands. He leaned forward, looking her up and down. "Hm. Both halves of your face are there. Not particularly impressive stature. You just look like any of these other yokels who come to grovel before me. I've heard so many stories about you, Courier Six, but I'm sorry to say that you just don't seem to live up to them. You are so very..." He paused, his eyes roving over her and lip curling up in disapproval. "Ordinary."

Six didn't respond. She'd like to think it was a strategic move, but truthfully, she didn't know what to say. In a way, she was unnerved at his words simply because she was thinking nearly the exact same thing about him. The mighty Caesar was a painfully average-looking middle-aged man slouching in his seat, irritated, like he had much better things he could be doing than talking to her.  _I could definitely kick his ass,_ she reassured herself. Not with all the guards surrounding them, of course, but for some reason, it still made her feel better.

"Yet, ordinary as you may be, you have somehow managed to get lucky enough to avoid my assassins and spend the last year screwing me over in every way possible. I should have you killed right now, since you were insolent enough to show up here." Wrath began to bubble up in his voice, and the shiver of fear that passed down her spine reminded her who she was dealing with. This was Caesar - the man who'd smashed his way here from across the east, who'd been clever enough to construct the Legion and brutal enough to see it through, reshaping the entirety of the east into the world he wanted to rule.

 _My question is answered. I'm an idiot, and this is how I fucking die._ Her heart was thumping so loud she could hardly hear anything around her, and she began to reply, but then, his jaw tightened on one side. It was small, but for just a second, she forgot where she was. Then, she realized the mannerism was so eerily familiar because she had seen it underneath the bandages on Joshua's face hundreds of times.  _They spent decades together._ Of course they would have picked up some of each other's habits. Six surveyed the armed guards standing around the throne. For most of the people who ever found themselves unlucky enough to be here staring down Caesar, they might've been staring at Joshua, too. From what she'd heard, that was even worse.

Maybe she was being paranoid, but she tried to banish those thoughts. It wasn't like Caesar could read her mind and know she was working with his hated ex-general, and as if that wasn't perilous enough, also screwing him, but she didn't want to even think about Joshua until she was a safe distance away from this camp.

Caesar's eyebrow raised, and through her racing thoughts, she realized he was still waiting for her response.

"Yeah."

Of all the things he could have done, he started laughing.

"Yeah." He repeated her, deadpan, and shook his head. "Okay, look. You've given me a hell of a hard time, but fortunately for you, I'm a reasonable guy. So let's cut the shit and talk."

His idea of a talk turned out to be more like monologuing at her, and she shifted her weight and discreetly shook her foot as it started to fall asleep. She used her ability to stay quiet in her favor - with every comment she held back, he filled the silence with more of his own explanations.  _This guy? Really?_  The evidence she'd gathered wasn't matching up with the man in front of her at all. She'd even expected some good old-fashioned "silence, woman" blustering directed her way, but Caesar really didn't seem to give a shit about her personally one way or the other, besides a mild amusement at making her uncomfortable.

 _How did Joshua end up here?_ Picturing them working together was almost surreal. The idea that he once threw away his home and his rules and his way of doing things to stay with _this guy_ and help turn his audacious visions into reality baffled her. Of course, whatever potential Joshua must have seen in the situation had eventually come to fruition. Caesar might have been in the right place at the right time - in a perfect storm of conditions to harness the chaos around him.

 _He doesn't even seem that smart,_ she thought, sour. For some reason, he was blathering on to her as if she hadn't been fantasizing about putting a bullet between his eyes for the better part of a year. Six nodded at the right times as she planned her next move. She still needed to find a way to get into that bunker. As it stood now, she figured her best shot was getting some decanus alone, slitting his throat and stealing his armor, and walking right in like she was supposed to be there. The disguise had worked for her before. Of course, that was on the fringes of their territory, and there were more scrutinizing eyes here in the camp. It would be risky, but she didn't have many other options.

"And, maybe I'm getting too sentimental -" He rolled his eyes, and the sarcasm dripping from his voice let her know that was absolutely not the case. "But a young upstart like you rising above the shitty situation you've found yourself in, coming down with an iron fist on anyone who stands in your way?" A wry smile crossed his face. "Not many people could pull that off. You get results, and you have no compunctions whatsoever about who you have to step on to get them." In an instant, his tone grew serious, a little quieter. "You made a name for yourself out of nothing, Courier Six. So did I. Part of me will always respect that drive. It's exactly why I wanted to talk to you. So, are you ready?"

She had some serious objections to the last few comments that just came out of his mouth, but she wasn't going to push it. She knew how and when to shut up and smile, and now was the time. She took a deep breath and decided to play along. 

"What is it you want me to do?"

He held up his hand. The platinum chip glinted in the torchlight, and she felt a tug toward it, like it was a piece of herself she'd been separated from.

"There's a fortified bunker underneath this camp. I want you to take this thing and destroy whatever gizmo robot shit you find in there."

At first, she thought she'd misheard. Surely, he couldn't be saying what she thought he'd just said.

"A bunker?" She put on her best confused face, like she had no idea about any of this. 

"Yes. That is what I said." He sounded exasperated, and started speaking slower. "Now, I want you to go inside and blow it up."

Six's relief was so strong that she had to physically restrain herself from jumping, or laughing, or showing any emotion at all. This was the bunker she'd been scheming over for months - the linchpin to every plan she'd laid out for New Vegas - and Caesar was handing it to her on a silver platter. 

"Why would I help you out?" She crossed her arms. As thrilled as she was, seeming too cooperative would alert his suspicion.

"There are rewards for doing as I order, and grave consequences if you refuse me." He held the chip out. "So, I recommend you lose the attitude and get your ass down there."

She gave a heavy sigh, and holy hell, maybe she was nuts for enjoying this performance ever so slightly, but this could not have been going better for her. He was so arrogant that he really thought that she - a person who spent the last year mercilessly firing on his men, displaying no allegiance to any of the flags currently staked into the cracked dust of the Mojave - that she, of all people, was about to do what he said, simply because he'd commanded her. It occurred to her that maybe he'd raised the empire around him from nothing simply because he believed it possible; he sold the lie that no one could disobey until it became reality, but today, that strength would be his undoing.

"Fine. If you insist." She stepped toward him and reached out for the platinum chip.

"I do." As he dropped it in her palm, the muscles of his face twitched, and he stared past her for a beat too long to seem natural. Then, he pulled back and mashed his hand into his temple. It was a subtle gesture, and it should have gone unnoticed to just about anyone else, but she recognized it. She often caught herself doing the same thing when she had a headache. It made her eyes scan over him again. This time, she noticed just how severe the slope of his shoulders was, and she realized he wasn't just slouching. The left side of his body was almost entirely slack. She met his gaze. The left side of his face was drooping slightly when compared to the right.  _That's not normal. Something's wrong._

"Well? Do you need someone to hold your fucking hand?" Caesar spat, with a strange waver in his voice. "Get going."

She wanted to stare at him for a little longer, but she pulled her hand back and turned around. It was time. This was what she'd been working and planning and bleeding over for nearly a year, and unless they killed her in between here and that bunker, she was going to execute it perfectly. The hard part was basically over, and everything was running according to schedule, but Six was never one to celebrate prematurely. She straightened her face and tightened her grip on the platinum chip, and with what felt like the weight of the world on her shoulders, she set off for the next step. As the guards pulled aside the entrance of the tent for her, she cheerfully realized that if she knocked this out quick enough, she could probably even make it home a day earlier than she planned.


	46. XLVI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a listed ending chapter now! 46/56-ish...Depending on how I end up segmenting certain things, give or take a chapter or two. But there's a light at the end of the tunnel :^)
> 
> This was originally posted as #45, but I switched the order.

There were some things Joshua still had a hard time adjusting to after the Legion, and being openly defied was one of them, but Six never was hesitant to push him toward possibilities that made him uncomfortable.

Two days after their confrontation, Six packed her bag and set off to pay a visit to the man who once tried to murder him in the most vicious way possible. They couldn't discuss it without arguing, so Six had stopped talking to him about it at all, which was worse. As he watched her gather up her belongings to leave, it felt like the floor was falling out from under him.

"This will be over before you know it. Don't worry." The rifle bounced against her side as she lifted the strap onto her shoulder.

"I will. Be careful. Stay alive."

"I'll do my best. I, uh -" She stopped speaking, and he put his hand on the side of her neck and ran his thumb along her jaw as he waited for her to finish her sentence. As their eyes met, her expression softened for just a second before she turned her gaze away. "Never mind. I'll see you soon."

The quick kiss Six pressed to his cheek and the sound of the door shutting behind her was what finally made the dreadful reality creep into his mind and settle there. All he could do now was wait and pray, and waiting never came naturally to him. It was a constant battle to redirect his energy, like an animal straining against its cage. The only way he could attempt to pass the time was going through the books in the study Six showed him. They obviously didn't belong to her, so the previous occupant of the building must have collected them. Joshua supposed that would be House, but he couldn't be sure. He never cared about this city or any of its tribal spats. 

The fact that he'd left his people yet again was beginning to bother him, and with each passing day, the idea of returning home grew from a nebulous desire into a concrete plan. The surviving New Canaanites needed to be together - rebuilding, regrouping, processing their collective grief. He had a responsibility to his tribe, but his yearning was driven by more than mere duty. It was something he so rarely felt that he almost didn't recognize it, but as he watched the days slip by, he realized that underneath it all, he was tired. As soon as he did his work here, he would go back to the broken remnants of his home, and they would do what people always did: pick up the pieces and put them together as best as they could.

It was unclear to him what Six wanted to do after the dust settled, and he was starting to suspect that she didn't know either. Her vision was tunneling in on Hoover Dam, constricting her ability to consider anything outside of putting her plans in motion. Perhaps she would want to stay in the city and ensure it was running smoothly, even though it seemed to bring her no real satisfaction. _We should talk when she returns,_ he thought. _If she returns._  In every consideration between them, there was always that problem: that one or both of them would not survive to the next month. He didn't know how to build up any kind of life that didn't revolve around destruction and fear, but as he sat around waiting, he knew that if they could make it through this, he wanted to try. _If._ He was tired of a life ruled by ifs.

 

 

While Six was gone, he tried to keep to himself as much as possible. He had no desire to infringe on these people's lives, and he wasn't particularly keen on feeling like the elephant in the room any more than necessary. Despite his self-imposed isolation, on the third night, he heard a sharp knock on his door. With trepidation, he half-opened the door, unsure of who would be calling on him. To his surprise, the doctor stood in front of him, running his hand through his already-disheveled hair. 

"Hi - Joshua?" Even slouching against the doorframe, he was tall enough that Joshua could look him straight in the eyes. "Can I call you Joshua?" His tone implied he was going to do that anyway, regardless of the answer.

"Yes."

"Okay, Joshua. Great. Did you know that your room is directly above mine?"

"No. I didn't."

"Well, it is. And that means I can hear what you're doing up here." Arcade took a deep breath. "And for the past hour, I have heard nothing but the sound of you pacing around, and I would really like you to stop, because I'm trying to get some work done and I can't focus."

"My apologies."

"It's fine. Just stop. Thanks." He tapped his fingers on the doorframe, and Joshua's eyes fell on a small, oblong box in his arms. "Yeah. I'm about to take a break, because again, I got distracted with all of the stomping." Arcade added. "So, I was wondering - do you know how to play chess?"

Fifteen minutes later, Joshua found himself in one of the overstuffed armchairs in the study, sitting across from the Arcade as they set up the chessboard in silence. He leaned back, eyeing Arcade as he hunched over the board, rubbing his chin. The stubble on his jaw was more grown out than usual. Arcade pushed his pawn forward and lifted his eyes, and Joshua immediately looked away.

They played without speaking for twenty minutes. Arcade sipped his coffee and stared at Joshua while he was making his moves. After he slid his rook up, he stopped pretending he wasn't staring and set his mug down on the table a little too hard. 

"Can I ask you a question?" Arcade folded his hands in front of his face. 

"Yes." 

"What's wrong with you?"

Joshua paused, trying to figure out what, specifically, he was referring to. Fortunately, Arcade was more than willing to elaborate.

"When I first heard about you - a person who spent his whole life raising a fascist dictatorship that anyone with a functioning brainstem would unequivocally recognize as 'the bad guys' - I thought to myself, okay, this guy must be either profoundly stupid, or unhinged, or cruel. I've listened to you talk for hours a day, every day for nearly two weeks, and clearly, you're fully capable of rational thought. So that leaves cruel. But even that doesn't totally satisfy my curiosity, because to top it all off, you really talk like you regret it all, and I wish I could sustain a little more healthy skepticism, but I actually sort of believe you. So I thought I'd ask you to enlighten me. Am I just gullible? Is it all an act?"

"No."

"So if you do have a sense of morality, then how the hell could you ever help Caesar in the first place?" He wasn't looking at the chess board anymore, but was staring Joshua right in the eyes. 

There were a multitude of responses he could provide: that he was simply born weak; that he was good at being a legate, and he substituted aptitude for purpose; that when he left his home, he was adrift in a world that felt too vast and too confounding, and he compromised his faith at the very moments he needed it most.

"I chose to sin because part of me wanted it." Joshua moved his knight forward. "Part of me always will, but no one is beyond saving, if we try to live humbly and righteously. God's love is absolute."

"Are you serious?" 

"Yes." 

"O-kay. Didn't expect you to be a glass half-full kind of guy. Oddly enough, I actually agree with you about the free will thing. But as far as the religious aspect goes - you make amends with God, and it's fine, no matter what? What about the people whose lives you devastated? Where do they come into the equation? That's my problem with your particular doctrine."

Joshua pushed his knight across the brown and cream squares of the chessboard and took Arcade's bishop. The wooden piece was worn and tarnished with age, and Joshua stared at small crack on the side where a splinter had chipped off. 

"Part of genuine repentence is making amends for sins against our brothers and sisters in Christ. But it doesn't depend on what I say or you believe. It's a truth larger than either of us."

"That doesn't really work for me." Arcade shrugged.

"It does for me, but I apologize that I couldn't be more helpful in resolving your dilemma."

"It's fine." Arcade slid his queen forward, and Joshua noticed he was in checkmate. He hadn't even realized the game was over, but he mentally retraced his steps and saw how it happened. He'd been so focused on his own moves that he left his king wide open. "You might not have satisfied my existential questions, but you are a decent chess player, if a little overconfident. Another game?"

 

 

They played chess every day after that, often going for hours without stopping. Sometimes they switched to card games to break up the monotony. Joshua didn't know any, so Arcade graciously taught him a few. It was just as useless as anything else he was doing to distract himself, but it was better than being alone all day. The wariness between them eroded little by little. It wasn't exactly friendship, but in another life, it might have been. Joshua tried to be cordial and ask Arcade about his family and where they were from, but he seemed jittery and usually gave a vague response, just like Six used to do. _Like she's started to do again,_ the sinking feeling in his stomach reminded him

With everything else, Arcade was quite talkative and open about his thoughts. More than a few times, he asked questions about his burns that other people were usually too uncomfortable to acknowledge.

"Not to pry, but your disability has to be pretty extensive. Do you still have much tactile sensation?"

"Pain, in most places, but some parts of my skin are nearly numb."

"Still? That's...interesting. Have you ever thought about trying to seek some kind of medical treatment?" Despite the negative opinion he may have held toward Joshua, the compassion in his tone was clear. 

"I don't take chems."

"I meant something more permanent. You might not know, but we have medical technology out here that might able able to help with some of the scarring and mobility issues. Probably the pain, as well. Have you considered it?"

For a moment, he did. He imagined what it might be like to pass a day without the pain coloring everything else he ever experienced; always the first thing he noticed in the morning and the last thing he felt before falling asleep. He thought about the parts of life that he'd lost, like feeling cool water on his skin, or the comforting warmth of sitting near a fire on a cold evening. He thought about the things he'd never felt, as well - touching the soft skin on Six's cheek when she smiled, or holding her hand without every nerve protesting at her touch. It had been so long since he'd lived without pain that he'd forgotten what it was like.  

"No."

Arcade cocked an eyebrow in confusion.

"And you don't want to?" 

"No." Joshua looked back down at the board. "Thank you for your kindness, but it's not something I'm interested in."

They started speaking Latin to each other on the next day. They were both hesitant at first, but after several years of not practicing, it was enjoyable to shake the dust off a language he'd relegated to the back of his mind. Arcade was even able to correct his pronunciation, which was rusty from disuse. It was rare for Joshua to meet someone who was even more well-read than he was, but after a few days of conversation, he was convinced he'd met his match. Arcade could swear colorfully with perfect Latin grammar and launch into a few lines of Virgil in the same breath. 

On the fifth day, when Arcade made a few thoughtless moves and lost his bishop and rook in succession, he let out a sigh. The hollows under his eyes were even darker today.

"I'm not on top of my game today, obviously. I've been thinking about Six quite a bit." Arcade leaned his chin on his hand and studied the board. "Her little trip to go play Aeneas should be over soon."

"I would volunteer Ulysses as a more fitting counterpart," Joshua responded. However, even he returned home to Ithaca eventually. It remained to be seen if Six's wandering would ever end.

Arcade smiled against his hand. 

"Hm. As much as the Romans hated him and his wily ways? Yours might be more suitable." He rubbed his jaw. "Which brings me to something else. You seem to know a lot about her." Joshua thought he detected a hint of suspicion in his voice, but perhaps it was his imagination.

"We did a great deal of work together in Zion. There weren't many ways to pass the time other than talking."

"Yeah, because she's notoriously chatty." The man rolled his eyes. "Let's not beat around the bush. Did you know each other before her trip to Utah?"

"No." _Thank God for that._ "We've found we share common goals, even if our reasoning behind them differs."

"Knocking out Caesar, I know. Yeah, but it's beyond that." He quirked an eyebrow. "You guys are sort of friends, aren't you?"

Joshua tapped his fingers on the table. Flat-out lying always made him uncomfortable, especially when it was to good people. 

"I'd like to think so."

Arcade shrugged and looked down at the board.

"Well, I wouldn't have predicted it, but that's Six for you. I swear, she can't go outside without picking up a stray." He sipped his coffee, then his eyes widened as he waved his hand. "Oh, I didn't mean that to be derogatory. I mean - I'm one of her strays, too - I - it's like an affectionate thing."

"I understand."

Arcade shook his head and looked back down at the chess board.  

"Anyway, you must have a unique perspective on this whole situation."

That was perhaps the understatement of the century. Every time Joshua pictured Six standing in front of Caesar and the entire Praetorian guard, with her shoulders thrown back like she did when she was trying to be intimidating, he felt something akin to physical illness. He knew all too well how the routine for Caesar's guests went. She would have her weapons taken away, and guards would block every available exit. Escape would be impossible, even for her. As much as he hated to admit it, it was up to whatever whim or mood struck Caesar when they saw each other. Over the years, he'd become more volatile and hubristic than he'd ever been as a young man. Joshua knew Edward better than probably anyone else in the world did, but even he was at a loss for how a meeting between him and Six would go.

"Frankly, I'm worried, but I keep trying to tell myself that if anyone can pull this off, it's her. If she can't find a way, she makes one." Arcade moved a pawn forward. "Ah. I'm misquoting Hannibal - another major headache for the Romans. Too bad we don't have any elephants around here."

He was right, of course. Hannibal was a clever strategist who managed to outmaneuver and terrorize the Romans in their own territory for years. _And in the end, he still lost._ Joshua didn't know how to tell Arcade that although Six was extraordinary, all the resilience in the world could not save her. In his life, he'd already seen too many remarkable men die face down in the dirt to give into that ignorance.

The only one who was untouchable was Caesar himself.  _I should've shot Edward years ago._  It was futile, wishful thinking. Back then, the thought never occurred to him. In the very beginning, he tried to dissuade Edward and talk him down, but when push came to shove, they were always a united front. Joshua had no idea things would turn out this way. _Did Edward know how it would end?_ He would never know the answer to that question, but that didn't stop it from occasionally darting through his mind.

"Anyway, I trust her, and we've all tried our best to give her good advice. Not that she always takes it. If she did, Benny might still be here waiting around with us. That would be quite an interesting menagerie at her disposal." Arcade laughed, but Joshua hardly heard it. After everything, he'd almost forgotten about him. It didn't matter, and he shouldn't be digging into Six's affairs, but an inquisitive twinge nagged at him. This might be his chance to finally get an answer. 

"Who's Benny?" 

Arcade squinted at him over his glasses. 

"You don't know?" 

"No." Joshua stopped tapping his foot and forced his tone to stay courteous, despite his rising dread.

"He was the head of one of the casinos here on the Strip, and, not coincidentally, also the guy who tried to kill her, and even less coincidentally, a guy she then killed. From what I understand, she spent a few months tracking him down. I met her as she was passing through Freeside to deliver his just deserts - best served cold, naturally." He yawned. "It's how we all met her. She never explicitly talked to us about it, but it was all over the radio. At this point, it's common knowledge."

"She killed him?" 

"Yep." Arcade took one of Joshua's pawns. "Like I said, I didn't really understand or support her obsession. But I'm willing to concede that I've never had anyone screw me over that royally."

"That seems…" _Unlike her._ That was what he was going to say, but he realized it wasn't true. It was very like her. The same qualities that he admired in her made it all too easy to imagine her dedicating months of her life to patiently hunting someone down in order to take an eye for an eye. On some level, he found it disturbing, but he wasn't in a position to be judging her for her past. He cleared his throat. "I didn't know."

Once he made it past his initial confusion, the whole picture became clearer. Benny wasn't a friend or an old flame at all. She was having dreams about him in Zion because he was the one who tried to kill her.

 _She lied to me._ Back in Zion, she told him she didn't know what happened to the man who shot her. It was a blatant lie. _Why would she keep the truth from me?_  He couldn't stop the doubt tugging at his mind. 

"Anyway, I don't mean to gossip. We all have our own problems, and I think she's doing a lot better now. Especially since she came back from Utah, seriously, the change was like night and day - go ahead. It's your move." Arcade gestured to the board. "Well, now you seem out of it, too. Maybe I have a chance at a comeback." 

 

 

The next night, Joshua heard Arcade and the scribe talking in the kitchen. The grim tone in their voices instantly set him on edge.

"Should we tell Boone?"

"Yes. Everyone has a right to know what's going on."

"I mean…" The scribe tugged at her sleeve. "You know it's different with him. And I don't know if we should panic yet."

"Excuse me." Joshua cut in between them. They both turned toward him, as if they just noticed he was standing there. "Is there news from Six?"

The scribe rubbed the side of her neck.

"Uh. Not exactly. More like no news. I tinkered with her Pip-Boy before she left, so it pings me her location if she's close. She went out of range at the expected time, but if my estimate is right, she should've been out of the Fort and back by now. She's not. Something's delaying her. Could just be that she got to the camp later than I expected. Or...worst-case, she's been in the Fort for two days. I don't know if she's okay, or what, but that was definitely not her plan." 

"Could she use her radio to call us for help?" Arcade ran his hand through his hair.

"From forty miles away, no antenna?" The woman blew out her cheeks. "Uh-uh. No way. And she has ED-E with her, but its transmission capabilities aren't functional." 

"All right." Arcade sighed. "Let's get everyone in here and have a talk. It's not time to abandon hope yet, but we should be realistic." 

 _I'll fast for a week if You bring her back safe. I'll never touch her again. I'll leave the second she comes back and never see her again._ Joshua's bargains and pleas to God ran through his mind, too fast for him to even really be cognizant of what he was asking or promising.

The sniper and the ghoul joined them, and Arcade leaned against the counter and explained the situation. Joshua stayed in the back and fixed his eyes on the glossy tile flooring. God's plan for him seemed to be surviving to see everyone he loved perish until he was the only person left. If he had it his way, he never would have outlived the majority of his community, and he wouldn’t outlive Six, either. 

The scribe set her radio on the counter, and they watched it in silence. 

"If I get any news, I'll let you know. We don't all need to sit around." 

No one moved to go. 

After an hour, they'd all started drinking. The atmosphere was a strange mixture of somber and frantic and detached, as if the Strip outside were going down in flames, but no one inside the tower wanted to acknowledge it yet. The scribe laid out cards on the table and started playing a game of solitaire. The ghoul had a paperback in his hands, flipping through the yellowed pages at a surprisingly brisk pace. The sniper sat in his chair with his arms folded and stared at the wall with a blank expression. Arcade came over near Joshua to throw his beer bottle away. 

"Seriously," he murmured. "You don't have to wait around. This isn't part of the job. We're all just kind of nervous, I think."

Joshua steadied his voice as best as he could. There was nothing in the world that would make him leave right now. 

"I'll wait." 

Arcade shrugged and plucked another beer from the fridge. The conversation between the group trickled out in halting, low bursts, like they were trying to keep their spirits up and not succumb to fear yet. 

"Hey." The ghoul put his book down. "Remember that one time we were all upstairs in the penthouse, and we watched our favorite pair of snipers pull on the door to this place for five minutes when it's clearly marked as a push door? That's probably the highlight of my time here, I'd have to say." 

Arcade rubbed his temple, and despite the obvious tension, the hint of a smile caught on his face.

"The sign is small." The sniper muttered. The scribe looked up from her card game with an excited grin.

"Oh, I have a good one. So me and Six went out one night, and it started out as - like, on our way to the bar, we kept assuring each other that this was gonna be a low-key night, okay, classy drinks like real adults, and then while we're starting to sit down, out of nowhere, this lady comes sprinting inside and says -" She broke off and looked down at the table sheepishly. "Ah, you know what, this story is nowhere near as family-friendly as I remember it being. Maybe I'll pass." 

"Thanks for sparing us the gory details." Arcade raised his eyebrows. "I think my favorite memory with her was early on. We were on the road and passed a group of powder gangers, and I'm reaching for my weapon, thinking we're about to get absolutely obliterated - because they attack everyone, right? But instead when they saw her, they waved and told her to watch out for the cazadores up the road. They already knew each other. I was just like, oh - this is who I'm dealing with. This person will talk to literally anyone. Even angry, dynamite-wielding escaped convicts." The smile dropped from his face. "At the time, it was sort of humorous, but it actually made me look at the situation a little differently."  

The scribe took a sip from her beer, then put her head in her hands. 

"Is this one of those things where you go around and tell nice stories about a dead person?" Her voice broke, and with it went the fragile veneer of nonchalance that hung between them all by a fine thread. The ghoul put his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him, wiping her eyes hard.

"There's still time." Arcade insisted, but he sounded grim. "Let's not assume she's dead without any evidence." 

"Fuck that." The sniper shook his head. "She's not dead. We know that. And here we are. Sitting around useless." 

The horror of it all was that he was probably correct. The rage in his chest boiled higher. Some people might prefer a quick death to what the Legion could inflict upon them. He wasn't one of those people, and he didn't think Six was either. It gave him pause that he wasn't sure. It was unpleasant, but given the situation they'd found themselves in, it was the kind of thing they should have discussed already.

"She gave us strict orders not to go anywhere." Arcade ashed his cigarette. "If we try anything rash, we could end up causing her even more trouble. We're staying here." 

"Goddamnit, you don't just abandon people like this," the sniper countered. "She doesn't deserve it." When no one responded, he slammed his beer bottle down on the table and stared at Joshua with cold hatred. "You shouldn't be here." 

His indignation swelled. No one had spent more time trying to convince Six that this was a bad idea than him. Who was this man to question him? _Of all people, I belong here. She's my -_ Joshua broke out of that thought, realizing he didn't know how to finish that statement. He didn't have a word for what he and Six were to each other. He forced himself to stifle his resentment as he responded.

"I implored her not to go. There is nothing I want more than her safe return." 

"Bullshit. You don't care. If you did, none of this would've ever happened in the first place. This is your fault."

Every single thought evaporated from his mind in a blinding flash. All he could do in response was take a step forward and lower his voice. 

"If you'd like to settle this with deeds instead of talk, then let's step outside."

The sound of a hand hitting the table broke into their conversation. 

"Stop it!" The booming thunder in Arcade's voice made everyone turn their heads to stare at him, stunned. Arcade's shoulders heaved, and he ran his hand through his hair again like he'd surprised himself, too. "Joshua, don't threaten him ever again. I'll..." He trailed off, seemingly losing his momentum. "I'm not kidding around, okay? Stop. But Boone - " he turned to face the man, and waved his hand. "Knock it off. I understand it doesn't make any sense to you, but he's here because he wants to help." He exhaled a shaky breath and picked his cigarette back up from where he'd dropped it on the ground. "Let's not be naive. We have some irreconcilable differences in this room, and Six isn't here to manage it. I know we're all afraid, but she chose to endanger herself for the greater good. Can we make an effort to honor that and hold it together long enough to not murder each other while she's gone? Please?" 

The white-hot flame of rage that he'd stoked and nurtured collapsed into despair. More than anything, he wished he was back in Zion, and that Six had never left. Despite all of the threats they faced, back there, he had some measure of control over the people and circumstances around him. Sitting here powerless and out of his element was the worst feeling imaginable. For just a second, Joshua thought about another life in which the people he loved didn't have to suffer anymore - where they were all safe. All he wanted was to be able to protect them. One more failure on his already-extensive list would be unbearable, but he'd have to bear it all the same. 

"So what do we do if she doesn't come back?" The scribe tapped her fingers on the table.

"She left me a list of instructions." Arcade leaned against the counter. "Does she have any family we should contact?" 

"No." Joshua and the sniper responded at the same time. They glared at each other again, then looked away. 

"How long do we wait?" The ghoul sighed and lit another cigarette.

"Veronica?"

The woman exhaled a long breath. 

"I'd give it a day. If I don't get anything by then, I think we're in trouble."

"One more day. If we have no news by tomorrow night, then we'll congregate and figure out our next steps." Arcade sighed, and his eyes fell on Joshua. "Patientia." 

The Latin word was a small kindness that he was too far gone to appreciate.  _It could signify patience - or suffering._ The concordance between those two words resonated more clearly than ever before. It was one thing to know the definition from reading a book, but to feel it unraveling and strangling him was something else entirely.


	47. XLVII

_Thirty minutes. That's all. I'll be out of here in thirty minutes._

Of course, real life never had the consideration to occur exactly as Six pictured it would. The front door unlocked for her, but once she made it down to the stuffy metallic heart of the bunker, the rest of the systems were unresponsive. After a few minutes of messing with the terminal, she unpacked what few tools they allowed her to keep and climbed underneath the server racks. This would be a quick repair - nothing to worry about.

She'd just barely started to relax when she heard a voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she realized things were about to veer all the way off course.

"We keep meeting, Courier. If I were a differently inclined man, I'd say it was fate."

She sat up so fast that she almost hit her head, but she caught herself and pushed out from underneath the server. For the third time in her life, Vulpes Inculta was standing in front of her, smiling his feline smile that made her skin want to crawl off of her body. Her immediate alarm at his presence was punctured by a stark realization: he must be disobeying Caesar to be here. None of the legionaries were allowed inside this bunker. He could be killed for that kind of transgression.

"I thought you guys weren't supposed to be down here." 

"That does not concern you."

Six braced herself for him to move toward, but all he did was nod at her to continue. She quickly put together the pieces: if Vulpes was off his chain, something here wasn't right. Caesar's unusual appearance came back to her mind. Maybe Caesar's grip on the Legion right now was weaker than she thought - some kind of internal fracturing, maybe, or undercurrent of rebellion.

She turned that over in her mind for the twenty minutes it took to fix the problem with the computer. Vulpes stayed. Six fought the panic threatening to overcome her. This wasn't supposed to happen. She needed him to leave, but she couldn't let him know that's what she wanted, or else he would immediately sense she was up to no good. The pliers in her hand tapped against the metal frame. _Think. Stay calm. How do I get him out of here?_

 

Four hours later, Six was on her back underneath the computer terminal, staring up at the wires above her head. She flipped the tiny switch yet again.

"Testing." Her voice echoed back at her. "Can you look at the green light on the side of the monitor and see if it's working?"

"Nothing," Vulpes grumbled.

"Mother of God." Six rubbed her eyes and shoved herself out from underneath the rack. "You sure you're looking at the right thing?"

"I do have eyes, profligate."

It was ungraceful, but this was the tactic she'd settled on: simply trying to drag this out as long as she possibly could and outlast him. The system was ready to go online, but she'd been pretending it was still broken in hopes that he'd get bored and leave. At this point, she'd been pulling out wires and knocking hardware components loose just to have something to fix so it would look realistic.

As furious as she was at her stroke of bad luck, she had to hand it to Vulpes. They were on hour four, and he was still hanging around. He didn't get to be head of the frumentarii by being easily distracted, she supposed. She didn't know how long she could keep this up, but she was near-delirious from the stress. There wasn't any functional ventilation down here, and the heat was suffocating. There was no way to tell how long it would take. Another four hours? Another day?

After an hour, he started actually talking to her, and for lack of anything better to do, she listened. People tended to do that if she was quiet for long enough, and she knew how to use it to her advantage. If she got him relaxed, he might give her just enough trust to quit watching and leave her alone.

He told her that Lanius was a week out from the dam, and an involuntary shiver of fear nearly claimed her. _Fucking hell. Only one week?_ He'd come all the way from Colorado, and with the level of mobilization needed for such a large army, Six had figured they'd have at least two more weeks, maybe three. She tried to stay calm, but that was terrible news. Vulpes appeared to sense it, because he continued spinning tales about Lanius that were obviously intended to frighten her. Six tried not to take it personally. He probably didn't know any other way to make small talk. 

"Legate Lanius is seven feet tall, did you know?" 

"Yeah." Six intoned. That had to be bullshit, no one was actually seven feet tall, but it was a common enough rumor.

"Did you know that the Legate has personal slaves, and he blinds them all to prevent them from looking upon his face?"

She stared up at the wire she was reconnecting and pushed her hair away from her damp forehead.

"That's pretty fucked up."

"He's a cruel man." Vulpes agreed, and the chair creaked as he leaned back. "Some of the officers are rather soft on the slaves, treating them like favored little pets. It's degenerate, if you ask me." She did not, but he continued anyway. "But not Legate Lanius. He enjoys inflicting pain. Caesar gave him the honor of joining the Legion after he killed sixteen of his own tribe in a fit of rage at their surrender."

Six wondered if mere intimidation was his only motive for explaining all of this. It was Vulpes, and if there was anything she knew about him, it was that he was always scheming something. The dread welled up again, and she shoved herself out from under the rack. She stuck her hand down her shirt and pulled out her pack of cigarettes, and Vulpes stared at her hard.

"You're not supposed to have those."

"Go snitch on me, then." She flipped Benny's lighter open and lit the cigarette. Pissing people off was normally something she avoided, but she was at the end of her rope and not quite thinking straight. None of this was supposed to be happening. 

Vulpes stood up and advanced toward her. The lighter clattered to the floor as she spun the screwdriver around in her hand, preparing to stab him if he made a move. All he did was reach forward and deftly pluck a cigarette from her pack. For a second, she just clenched the screwdriver, too stunned to respond.

"Well?" The cigarette bounced between his teeth, and he met her gaze head-on, as if to issue a challenge. She kicked the lighter away from his striking range, then picked it up with slow, cautious movements, not taking her eyes off of him. After another impatient raise of his eyebrow, she flicked the lighter open and touched the flame to the end of the white paper.

"I thought you aren't allowed to smoke."

He took a drag and lifted his eyes to watch the smoke curl up toward the lights.

"Go snitch on me." 

 _Point taken._ They stood next to each other for an uneasy moment, then Six slid down the wall and sat on the floor. Curiously enough, he followed her, sitting on the ground a few feet away. He unbuckled the top of his armor and tossed it to the side. Sweat was soaking through his undershirt, and he wiped his forehead off with the back of his hand. 

"Thought those were like…" She gestured to her body. "Dresses, or something."

He stared at her, looking utterly tired, and flicked his ashes onto the floor. Six spotted a chipped mug and nudged it between them so he could ash into it. They sat there smoking in silence for a few minutes, each staring at anything but one another. The eerie blue glow of the smoke drifting up into the emergency lighting only reinforced the overwhelming feeling that she should be anywhere but here right now.

"So, Lanius brutally killed a bunch of guys and got a reward." Six pulled her knees up to her chest. "What about you? How'd you get into this line of work?" 

Vulpes stared at her with those stony, unwavering blue eyes. He was skilled at controlling his facial expression: not one stray flicker of emotion betrayed his true thoughts, whatever they might be. 

"When I was young, a man and his army and their red banners came to my home and destroyed it. It was a small, unremarkable tribe. The boys like myself were assimilated. The rest did not survive. The names of those in my tribe - " He looked over his shoulder at the door, then returned his unyielding gaze to her. "Of all involved, really, have been lost to history." 

Six felt a muted surprise at his admission. Believing in all of this because he was born into it made sense, but he must have been able to remember his life before the Legion rolled in. 

"And you want to be like the people who took everything from you?" 

For once, she thought he was going to hesitate, but he continued in the same confident, monotonous tone as always.

"My people were nothing but a flock of sheep patiently waiting to be slaughtered, as are all of the ignorant and the dissolute. That day, I stopped being ignorant. When that man descended upon them, I saw a wolf for the first time, and I learned the truth about this world." 

"I'm sorry that happened. It shouldn't have." Six looked down at the shiny metal floor, and some kind of weakly pulsing pity for him struggled in her chest as she imagined all that he might have seen - flames licking his home, his people put to death, his mother crying as he was torn away from her. "But it doesn't excuse anything you've done."

Vulpes gave a brittle laugh. His eyes were empty and pitiless as he surveyed her again.

"You still show how little you understand. I have no desire to be excused." He stubbed the cigarette out and threw it in the mug. "The strong need not ask forgiveness from the weak."

After that she returned to her work, and he quieted down, with his arms folded across his chest and his gaze fixed on the wall. Six couldn't help but wonder if he was trying to convince himself, too. Maybe there was some part of a person's heart or mind that could not be rotted away by the Legion. Then again, maybe he was so far gone that it all seemed like it happened in another lifetime, a distant memory involving some other person he swore he would never be again.

 

Eventually, Vulpes sighed and crossed his arms. He'd been pushing himself around in the rolling chair at the desk, and the squeaking was grating on her nerves.

"Night will fall soon. Why can't you finish this tomorrow?"

"I'm not gonna explain to Caesar that I stayed up past my bedtime and decided to quit. He told me to get it done, so I will."

After a few hours of squabbling back and forth, she figured out that was the magic button to make him shut up. Implying in any way that Caesar might be displeased with his performance was enough to make him stop pestering her. As smug as she was, it was still surprising to realize she completely misjudged him before. She sort of assumed he was being as calculated about this whole Legion thing as he was about everything else - like at any moment, he was going to shoot her a sideways glance and admit they both knew this Son of Mars shit was all nonsense, but the Legion let him torture people to his shriveled little heart's content, so he was down for it.

She was wrong. When he spoke about the Mighty Caesar, his voice lifted like an adoring little boy talking about how his father is the toughest guy in the whole world. He believed in it all, fanatically and righteously. It was the absolute last thing she expected. In a way, a display of cynicism would have comforted her. Even if it was horrible, it would have been something she understood.

"Ah. From one professional to another, that was the wrong thing to say." Vulpes stood up. "So now it's time to drop the pretenses. You were right, you know."

He drew a gun from under his armor. She scrambled backwards, and he opened his hand to show her it was flat against his palm, not pointed at her, and she halted.  _My gun._ It was María, illuminated in the sickly blue light. 

"I'm not supposed to be down here. I just returned from my assignment at Camp Searchlight." Six remembered the traders telling her about the camp being wiped out, and her throat felt dry. "I spoke with one of the guards at the entrance of this camp about some routine business, and I saw one of them fiddling with this." He lifted her gun. "Pure luck on my part, if you believe in that sort of thing. Anyway, I'm pleased to see you finally accepted my invitation here."

She said nothing, but he advanced on her. "I thought I'd come down and have a conversation with you. See what treachery you plan to commit next." His lips turned up in an imitation of a smile. 

"I'm not up to anything. I have full permission from your boss to be here, and I don't think he'd appreciate you going behind his back like this," she shot back. "If you wanna talk to him, let's go up and talk to him. The systems aren't working, I can't control that-" 

"Your lies won't save you. It's over." He cut her off, and her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. "I told you before. I know quite a bit about you. The evidence condemns you already. The head of the Chairmen invited you into his chambers, and so did House, and see what repayment they received for their faith in you. I will not allow the Legion to meet the same fate."

Her blood turned ice cold. He had more information than she suspected. Only her friends knew she personally eliminated House, or so she thought. She wasn't going for the knife yet, but she lowered her hand, ready to draw it if he made a sudden move.

"Courier Six, before we proceed, I want to tell you something. I've been a little fascinated by you ever since we met." No matter how uneasy that admission made her, Six couldn't help but feel the same way. When she thought about the worst that people could do to each other, Vulpes's face in Nipton was always what she saw. It was her first confirmation of her deepest suspicions: the world was a indifferent, unpredictable place, where any scrap of comfort could be taken away in the blink of an eye.

"Lord Caesar thinks little of you. Did you know that? I convinced him to assign a frumentarius to learn about you. I suggested he invite you here."

She guessed they were collecting information on her, but the confirmation that a spy had been following her around was chilling.

"I don't believe you."

"Remember the day we met, when I cleansed Nipton of its filth?"

Of course she did. It was seared into her memory, replaying over and over since she saw it. Vulpes lifted his chin when she met his gaze again. "Do you know why I suspected that you might someday prove useful?"

She refused to answer him, but he continued, the triumph swelling in his voice.

"My men burned Nipton to the ground. By the time you found it, it was a smoking hellscape. Heads on pikes. Crucified men breathing their last, as far as the eye could see. Flames everywhere. Billowing smoke." A fond expression crossed his face as he reminisced. "But quiet. There was no screaming - no one who could possibly be saved by some passing good Samaritan. It was merely a scorched and cursed stretch of earth, warning all who encounter it to stay away. Nothing salvageable."

The quiet. It was true. She remembered it - the kind of quiet that could still the pounding of your own heart.

"So?" 

"From that which all others flee, you walk towards. You simply had to get a glimpse for yourself, didn't you? I think you enjoy the wreckage you walk through more than you can bear to admit. You seek it out because you need it. You need us." The word floated from between his teeth, sibilant. "Just like every other profligate, you need the Legion to show you your place in the world."

Everything felt wrong, so wrong, like some terrible storm was about to descend upon her, and it had been coming for too long to stop it now. 

"You're out of your mind. I have no clue what you're talking about."

"You do, but you choose not to accept truth when it is revealed to you. You have a knife, obviously." He nodded down at her hand. "But I know you're smarter than that. Think ahead."

If she killed him and walked out of the bunker without him, the guards would stop her. She would never leave this place.

"Fine. I'm listening." Every muscle in her body shrank away from him, and she wished more than anything that she could just punch him like he deserved. "What do you want from me?"

"Everything." He was so close to her that she could see the black points of his pupils in the blue light, and her pulse started thumping in her neck. She took a step back and felt the wall against her shoulders, and her mind spiraled out of control, wondering how she could have let him corner her. "But first, I want an answer. What's inside this bunker?"

He was fast, and she wasn't ready. The sharp pain in her neck made her stagger. She tried to twist out of his grip and shove him back, and he crushed her throat harder, and a harsh gasp choked out. His hands were wrapped around her neck, and he was squeezing so tight it felt like her head was going to explode.

"Courier Six, you're not thinking straight." He chided. Six's mind left the room and went careening over the slopes and valleys of her memory, flicking through all the times she'd almost died. This was worse than all of them combined. She couldn't breathe. The room around her started swimming, and the pain was overwhelming as his hands extinguished her life. His fingers tightened, and dots of light began to prickle her vision. "This is the point at which you outlive your usefulness." He tapped the trigger guard on her gun, right next to her face. "So, let's negotiate. All you have to do is tell me what it is you came here for, and I won't kill you like this. It's a terrible way to die, you know."

She wanted to spit in his face and go down with her dignity intact, but the hot bubble of fear rising in her throat was too much. Her thrashing body took control over her mind. There was nothing in the world she wouldn't sacrifice to make it stop. She nodded as best as she could against his hands and beat at his chest with her fist to let her go.

"Army." She could barely choke the word out.

He shoved her into the wall. The glass cracked against her forehead. Blinding light overcome her sight as she gasped for air, shooting sparking jolts behind her eyes. Her hands found her temples, slow, blurry, like none of this was really happening. Vulpes's voice rolled around her mind, too wavy to hear. She jammed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, holding back the nausea that crashed over her. Her face pressed into the cool glass as she slumped against the wall and her vision faded in and out. 

Vulpes was peering inside the window, shielding his eyes from the light with his hands.

"That makes sense. You intended to destroy us with Mr. House's technology. My Lord is a wise ruler. They will be destroyed." He aimed the gun at her. "How do I do it?"

Everything stood still except for the throbbing in her head and face. She looked down the barrel of her gun and for a split second, she hoped he'd go ahead and pull the trigger.

"The chip." The words sounded like they belonged to someone else. To her horror, he gestured toward the terminal with her pistol. 

"A crime demands a punishment. In return for your pride and deceit, you will end this." 

 _Stab him,_ her brain said, still desperately clinging on to the idea that she could make it out of this. She could put his armor on - But the guards had to know they were in here together. They would realize what she'd done, and if they didn't kill her immediately, the legionaries swarming outside would.

"I -" The word was nothing but a broken puff of air scraping out of her throat. "Please don't make me do this. Please. Please." Despite the scorn on his face and her own disgust, she felt tears springing into her eyes. If he took this away from her, she would have nothing. 

"Let's finish this. We've been here long enough."

Even as the world slid around her like mist, she was still weighing all the possibilities, looking for something, anything, any way to stop this from happening. She had no options left. She'd been outplayed.

Everything was shifting, fragmenting like an old film reel with parts torn out. As she looked down at the hand sliding the platinum chip into the slot on the terminal, her brain told her this body belonged to someone else, that not even the familiar callus on her index finger could prove that it was her doing this. As her vision gradually filled back in, through the eyes of someone else floating above her, she saw the explosions travel up the line behind the glass, one by one. Sirens began to wail around her, and she saw the dominoes falling. The future of every last person in the Mojave was one step closer to destruction. 

Without the securitron army, the Legion would take the Dam. When they took the Dam, the NCR would retreat, leaving them all to their fate, and Lanius would march on New Vegas. They would launch an attack, and the city would be on borrowed time until its walls fell. She saw it all: the children ripped away from their mothers, the men executed in the streets, the women with collars clamped around their necks.

The world lurched around her. Had she come a day earlier, or a day later, maybe none of this would have happened. She was witnessing thousands of people condemned on nothing more than the barest margin of a knife's edge and her own miscalculations.

Everyone in Goodsprings who'd given her help when she first came into this world. Every grumpy bartender she'd ever bought a beer for, every farmer who'd ever complained to her about the weather, every traveler who'd once bummed her a cigarette. Every kid from California who'd been writing to their parents about how excited they were to come home; every scrawny sad-eyed little legionary recruit who would now grow up to be a killer someday. She thought about every person she cared about, and how they would die too unless they left her right now and got the hell away from the city.

Even that would not be enough. Once Caesar had his Rome, the Legion would push further outwards, unstoppable. The Followers and the Brotherhood and the Kings and the Dead Horses and the Sorrows would be subjugated soon, and the New Canaanites, too; people she'd never met but cared about anyway just because Joshua loved them. They were all going to die because of her, and when Caesar finally found Joshua, he would, too, and he'd taken a risk on her all because she asked him to and she loved him too much for any more bad things to happen to him and she just failed him and failed everyone else and failed herself -

It was too late, but she understood now. With every step she took forward, all leading up to the descent into this dark room, she'd never been alone - she'd been carrying the weight of all of those lives with her, and she just stumbled. She'd come this far, pulling off plan after improbable plan, just because she was good at it, and she didn't know how else to live, and it was fine when she was winning, but this time, she missed. 

She had no plan for missing.  _I did everything right,_ her mind reeled in protest. _Everything. How am I losing? I can't lose. I can't._

She didn't think people really fell on their knees when horrible things happened, but as she stared at the explosions, she became aware that her legs were buckling as her hand slid down the glass window.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Courier." Vulpes met her gaze and she hated him so much, so fucking much that it throbbed underneath her chest, and the faint smile on his lips only made it overflow and ooze out between her ribs. He threw her gun down beside her, smirking with the knowledge that she would not use it. "I'll inform Caesar of your obedient service." 

 _I hate you,_ she thought. _I hate you. I hate you._ She thought about her own brain as it snapped and unspooled like a broken machine, and the murderous hatred turned inward. _I hate you too. You always let me down._

She stared at the face of the Virgin on the pistol she'd stolen from Benny before his body was even cold, then the platinum chip she'd stolen from Mr. House. Maybe neither one of them would have fucked this up so bad. She thought about the person who lived in this body before her, and she wished she could apologize for stealing her life, too. Who did she think she was? Joshua told her she was in over her head, and goddamn it, as usual, he was right. She was not a god or an emperor or a general or a genius. Without the package she'd been carrying, what was she? An empty grave. A thief. A void.  _I am nothing._

As if moving of their own accord, her hands raked the chip up off the ground. They were shaking so hard, like she couldn't get them to work right. The chip rolled across the floor with a pitiful plink. Her brain gave up and she pressed her forehead against the cold metal floor. 

"Stay here, if you want. I don't care." She heard the impatience in his voice. Dead or alive, it didn't matter. With everything stolen from her, she was no longer a threat. She curled up further into the floor, wanting to disappear, to evaporate as if she'd never even existed, because she shouldn't have. She couldn't understand how the universe could be so cruel as to bring her back a second time, to make her exist here as this half-person unmoored in between life and death.

"We'll be looking for you when New Vegas falls," he taunted.

He was right. In one week, for everyone in the city, the end of the world would arrive. Someone had to deliver the message.

She opened her eyes. Dark red droplets pooled on the floor, reflecting the eerie blue light back at her. With shaky hands, she scraped the chip off the floor and took the gun. The cold metal floor pressed into her knees, and she looked up toward the light. Her head was still ringing, melting and weaving through the sound of the sirens. Something warm dripped down her face, and the salty taste in the back of her throat made her stomach pitch again, but she forced herself to drag her body up and rise. 

 _Take the first step. That's all. One foot in front of the other._  Forty miles to the tallest tower in the desert, one foot in front of the other, head pounding like a drum, bleeding all the way. She'd beaten much worse odds before. 


	48. XLVIII

As Joshua watched the white flag billow in the sluggish breeze, he felt like he could fully breathe for the first time in a couple of weeks. The sun was directly overhead, hitting them mercilessly without a cloud in the sky, but he squinted up at the flag on the top of the wall anyway and listened to the clamor of conversation around him. Most of it was in English or Spanish, but there were some languages he didn't recognize - probably groups from further east.

Arcade stopped walking, and Joshua stopped alongside him.

"Over here's where I work - hey." He waved at a woman stacking boxes next to a tent and turned back around. "Doing very important things, I assure you. Like showing visitors around. I just need to get my backwards walking down, and then I'm sure my tour guide career will take right off."

That morning, Arcade asked Joshua if he'd like to accompany him to the Old Mormon Fort, and he'd accepted. Staying indoors all the time was making him restless. They'd been walking around for an hour or so, and he was glad he'd come. Seeing a place his people built over four centuries ago filled him with a hope for the future. They'd survived this long in the face of war and death, and they would survive longer yet. Their enemies could raze their buildings, but as long as they were alive and with the people they loved, there was hope. 

The relief broke over him like seeing the first rays of sunlight after a long, cloudy night. It was how he felt that morning when they got the news that Six should be back by the afternoon. It was how he'd feel when he saw her face again in a few short hours. The most difficult part was behind them, and she'd survived. _Soon, this will all be over,_ he told himself. 

"These people are all here because of Six." Arcade nodded toward the tents, as if he could somehow sense where Joshua's thoughts had gone. "There's NCR refugees from the west and Legion refugees from the east, and they end up here in the middle. She diverts most of the city's resources to places like Freeside. It's divisive, to put it mildly, but she's stuck to her guns so far." 

It was subtle, but now that he was thinking about it, he could practically feel her presence around him in the sun-beaten assortment of wanderers, exiles, and migrants in the camps dotting the main roads. They were lost, cast out of their homes and lives, and it was easy to see why Six's sympathies lay with them.

"Admirable."

"Uh-huh." Arcade shot him a sideways glance. "You know, your skill set would be pretty useful around here. We have people pouring in from the east every day." He shrugged. "If you, uh, end up staying for whatever reason, we could really use a translator."

The red cross on the white banner twisted harder, buffeted by the wind. The heat looked like it would be sweltering later, but the breeze was starting to pick up. Normally, he would be grateful, but inside the walls of this city, the wind only ever carried the smell of asphalt and burning tires.

"Thank you," Joshua responded. "But those days are behind me. I've forgotten most of the dialects I used to know."

"Well, sure, but you still know a few, right?" Arcade gave a miffed laugh, verging on confusion. "We could use all the help we can get. Doing something is better than nothing at all."

"I can't."

He opened his mouth like he was about to challenge Joshua again, but a woman called his name and beckoned to him.

"Sorry. That's my boss. I need to see what she wants."

They walked to the corner of the camp, and Arcade and the woman in the white coat began speaking to each other. Joshua turned and watched the rest of the Followers as they worked. A woman was giving a vaccination to a screaming infant while his mother tried to comfort him. Another man turned the corner with a stack of crates in his arms. Even through the plastic slats of the box, his face made Joshua pause. 

Their eyes met. It was impossible to tell who lunged first. The crates crashed to the ground in a flurry of hands and elbows. Joshua went for his gun, but the other man landed a blow on his face, forcing him to throw his hands up in defense. The man readied his fist for another swing, thankfully giving him an opening. Joshua grabbed the man's head and flung him down while throwing his knee up into his groin. That was enough. His howl ricocheted around them, and he crumpled onto the ground like a wounded animal. Joshua drew his gun and aimed for the head. 

"Wait!" 

He turned around and saw Arcade staring at him, his eyes wide with shock. Everyone around them had fallen silent. The copper tang of blood welled up in the back of his throat.

"What the - what just happened?"

Joshua crouched down and pressed his knee into the man's chest. The pain wracked his body, near-debilitating, and his hand tightened on the gun. Fighting in such close quarters wasn't preferable. If he hadn't ended it quickly, he'd probably be the one on the ground right now. He stared at the familiar face in front of him, and through the rush of adrenaline, his words came back to him. 

"He's with the Legion." He pressed the gun to the man's cheek. "He's a frumentarius. One of their spies." Arcade came over to peer down at the man. Joshua looked in his gray eyes, wet and shiny with pain, and the memory began to come back to him. The man had been under his own command before he was promoted to the frumentarii. 

"Legate," the man gasped out through the pressure on his windpipe. He sounded surprised. Joshua ground his forearm down harder and listened to the wheezing as he briefly mulled over that. The frumentarius seemed unprepared and unaware that he was alive up until fifteen seconds ago. _He's not here for me._ The realization sank upon him like a weight. The man was either assigned here to spy on their operations and feed information back to the Legion, or he was supposed to assassinate Six. 

"Hey Joshua, wait, don't - don't kill him."

"I'm not letting him go." Cries of pain escaped through the man's clenched teeth as he gave a feeble attempt at struggling away.

"Well, yeah, no. Don't do that either." Arcade waved his hand. "I just meant that Six usually likes to question them. Do you think we can get him back to the Strip?" 

Joshua shoved the man's shirt up and snatched the knife concealed against his ribs, tossing it to the dirt beside them, and Arcade kicked it farther away. Taking prisoners was riskier than simply killing them, but if Six wanted to talk to him, she must have a good reason. Besides, a small crowd had already gathered around them to gawk at the altercation, and he'd rather not attract any more attention than they already had. He lifted the gun away from the man's face. The pressure from the muzzle left an indent on his cheek.

"Help me."

Arcade cursed under his breath and grabbed the man's other arm. They hauled the spy to a standing position between them. The crowd of doctors and families around them watched, wide-eyed and quiet. Arcade nudged the frumentarius in the the side to make him stop dragging his feet, and looked over at Joshua.

"I guess this concludes the tour. Sorry about your nose."

Joshua brushed his fingers against the bandages on his face, but he couldn't feel anything but pain throbbing through his face.

"Blood?" 

"Little bit." Despite the less than ideal circumstances, an edge of humor crept into his voice. "But I have a feeling you're probably going to live, don't you?"

 

 

They dragged the frumentarius up the tower, met only by a barrage of insults and minimal physical resistance. He knew better than to fight them. As they rounded the corner into the kitchen, Joshua heard the ghoul and the scribe speaking in Spanish over the clink of dishes and running water. 

"Aquí está, hablando del rey de roma." Raul nodded at Joshua and Arcade as they hauled the frumentarius inside the room. Six had taught him enough that he could puzzle out the separate words, but he didn't know what exactly they'd been talking about.

"Whoah. You guys made a new friend?" Veronica wiped her hands off and stared at the man halfheartedly thrashing against them.

"He's a Legion spy." Arcade helped Joshua shove the man down into the chair. "He was hiding out with the Followers, but Joshua noticed him. I thought Six might like a word with him."

"Oh, hell yeah. Now that's a welcome-home present." Veronica chirped. "And here I was just gonna make her some popcorn. Or I would, if all the pots weren't dirty because someone never washes their dishes." She glared over her shoulder. "It's you, Arcade. You never wash your dishes."

"I was going to get to them later." 

"Not good enough." She shook a frying pan in his direction. Arcade waved her off and stared down at the spy as Joshua held him in the chair.

"Can you sit here and behave?"

"When I get out of here, I am going to rip - "

"Okay, that's a no." Arcade pushed his glasses up. "I'll grab the zip ties." The tone in his voice told Joshua that this wasn't his first time dealing with such a situation. "Look, this is just so you don't escape." Arcade explained as they bound his hands and legs. "Don't do anything stupid, and we won't hurt you."

The frumentarius hurled curses at them, but not even that could put a damper on the celebratory cheer in the air. It was as if a cloud had been lifted from all of their shoulders. 

"What's your name?" Raul yawned as he dumped a spoon of sugar into his mug.

"Alerio," he grumbled.

"You want a coffee?"

The frumentarius ignored him and trained his eyes on Joshua.

"You know that's the Burned Man, right?" Alerio nodded his head, gesturing despite his bound hands. "You filthy traitor. You're a - " A piece of popcorn sailed across the room and hit him on the side of the face.

"Man, shut up." Veronica pulled her hand back in a threat to aim another piece at him. 

"What? The guy covered in burns? Stellar detective work there." Raul tossed his spoon in the sink. "Dumbass."

The frumentarius protested a few more times, but once he realized they were ignoring him, he fell silent and simply glared at them. For everyone else, the mood stayed upbeat, and they were still chattering to one another as Joshua excused himself to go upstairs. As far as he could tell, the bleeding from his nose had stopped, but he needed to change the stained bandages. 

An ominous hush fell over them, stripping the group of all their levity, but Joshua didn't see Six until he nearly crashed right into her in the doorway. As soon as he got his bearings, he realized why they'd all stopped speaking - a white bandage covered the bridge of her nose, and her ashen face looked stark as death itself. Six grabbed his elbow to steady herself, and his breath caught in his throat. 

"What happened?" She lifted her hand like she was going to touch his face, then thought better of it and pulled away. 

"I'm fine," he assured her. "Are you hurt?" She shook her head. Other than the strange bloodless look about her, she had no other signs of injury. Her hand slid down to his wrist, and he realized he'd been clutching her forearm too. He let go as she stepped past him into the kitchen. 

"Finally," Raul began cautiously. "What took you so long, boss?"

"I got held up in the camp." She took her gloves off and tucked them in her back pocket. Joshua couldn't ignore the disquiet tugging in his stomach. That spelled nothing but trouble. 

"You look like shit." Veronica frowned in concern and folded her arms.

"I haven't slept in two days." Six's voice was listless. They were all pausing to see if she'd volunteer any more information. They shouldn't have held their breath. Six crossed to the counter, barely acknowledging they were all standing around staring at her until she looked up and froze in place. "Who's this?" She nodded her head toward the frumentarius, still sulking in the chair. Arcade attempted a smile and pointed toward the man.

"A legion spy. We found him at the - hey."

She was already striding toward him, craning her head down in examination. Arcade cleared his throat.

"So, we thought you might want to talk to - "

"You're a frumentarius?" Six's voice was hard. Alerio glowered at her, refusing to speak. She stood up straighter without tearing her eyes away. "Joshua?"

"Yes." Joshua replied. "He is." 

In one fluid motion, Six pulled her pistol and pressed it to the man's forehead.

"No, please wait - " Alerio gulped. "I - "

The crack of the pistol was ear-splitting in the enclosed room. Ruby blood sprayed on the pale blue tile wall behind them. The faces of the people around him were openly shocked, like they were struggling to piece together what they'd just seen. Six holstered her gun and wiped her hands off. 

"In the kitchen?" Veronica sputtered. It was a ludicrous thing to say, but there was nothing else to be said. Six took her knife out and slit the zip ties, and the body slumped to the ground with a muffled thump. She walked to the intercom and hit the button below the speaker. 

"Yes Man, I have a body upstairs." Her tone was casual, as if she were discussing a dead fly that needed to be taken outside and disposed of. "And I need you to contact every single representative from all of our factions. Tell them to be here in two hours." 

"I can help radio everyone, but the Boomers need at least two and a half to get here from Nellis." Veronica put in hesitantly. 

"Tell them to walk fast." Six looked up. "And Joshua?" Her eyes met his, and instead of anger or fear or satisfaction, there was simply nothing behind them. "With me, please. We need to talk."

 

 

Joshua didn't look at Six until they were in the meeting room down the hall. As soon as she closed the door behind them, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pressed his hand into the spot between her shoulder blades. He hated it. It reminded him how physically fragile the human body could be, and how a life was held together only by breakable bones and skin and a few inches of body armor. 

"He had to die," she asserted. "He saw you. There's no way I could let him live."

 _Of course not._  She wouldn't make such a careless mistake. He was merely surprised that she'd executed him so quickly. Something must have changed that now made whatever information the frumentarius had possessed worthless. 

"Are you all right?" 

"Yes and no." She pulled back and looked up at him. The hollows under her eyes were deep and dark. "I'm not dead, but I kinda wish I was." 

"That's not funny." His voice was more severe than he intended. The racing of his pulse made him tighten his grip on her shoulders. "What happened? Did they hurt you?"

"Nope."

"How did you escape?"

"Caesar let me leave."

"It wasn't a trick?"

"Not really."

"And how was he?" At his question, her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, and for a second, a mistrusting expression flashed across her face. He shook his head, impatient. "How did he respond to you?"

"We kept it brief. Didn't exactly sit down for coffee." 

"And everything else?"

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then winced like she'd forgotten it was sore.

"I mean - hell." Her hand dropped to her side with uncharacteristic clumsiness, and the hard suspicion stayed in her eyes as she gave him a sideways glance. "I don't know. It was fucked up. I don't really wanna talk about it."

 _With you._ He heard what she wasn't saying. He'd expected that reaction, but it still made foreboding rise in the pit of his stomach. It was the first time she'd been behind the lines of a Legion camp - a place he used to command - alone and probably terrified, and he couldn't control the things she saw. 

"Look, let's move on." The tone in her voice indicated it was clearly an attempt to paper over her discomfort. "I made a mistake in there. My plan failed. I'd bet on the Legion taking the dam and breaking down the walls of this city in less than two weeks." She gave him her best endeavor at a dignified expression. "Thank you. You've been helpful. Now, you should go back to Utah and round up the rest of your people and get out. Idaho or Wyoming or - I don't know. Go north. Get somewhere far away from here."

By her flat delivery, he could tell she'd been rehearsing her words. His eyes fell on the scar on her cheekbone. For a second, his mind went to the day she'd gotten it, back when they were attacked in Zion. He remembered that night, and how furious he'd been at everyone and everything around him. The rage was always there, but now it burned so low that he could press it in the back of his mind, as close to extinguished as it could ever be. The swirling mass of pent-up emotions hit him at once - his desire to return home, the mental exhaustion and disgrace he felt every single day he was here, and above all, how much more difficult things were about to become. Before he even began to sort through all of his potential courses of action, he gave up. It was useless. 

"No."

"You've done enough," she insisted.

"There is more to be done."

"You're dismissed." The words were cold and stiff, but the waver in her voice betrayed her. As she fought to keep her face from crumpling, he felt the unmistakable spine-chilling fear of watching one of the calmest people he'd ever known begin to fall apart. Strangely enough, once he saw her start to crack, a sense of serenity rolled over him, and he racked his brain for a way to convince her. Sentiments would not sway her, so he needed to talk practicalities.

"Think long-term." He stepped closer to her and lowered his voice. "If I return to Zion and suggest they evacuate, it's only delaying the inevitable. There is no second chance. This must stop here."

She was already aware of that, of course, but now that it was in the open, there was no possible way she could contest it. For a few moments, she was quiet. When her shoulders slumped in a sigh, he saw that he'd won, although it brought him little contentment.

"I know." The words broke out of her mouth. "God. We're so screwed."

"I don't care."

"I don't see a way out of this." Her hands trembled as she rubbed the side of her face.

"You will. And I'll help you." It was true. If there was anything he knew down to his bones, it was that she was their best hope.

"I don't want you to get dragged into this mess any further. I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

The simple, unguarded note of anguish in her plea caught him off guard. No one else had openly worried over him like that before, and for the past few years, he'd assumed no one would ever truly mourn him. Besides, he'd avoided death so many times that it was no longer something he feared or expected anytime soon.

She met his eyes, and it occurred to him that he'd never really seen her crying from sorrow before, but the luminescence in her eyes told him she was barely holding her tears back. A jolt of raw fear overcame him, and for a rare moment, he was entirely at a loss for what to say. Soothing, pacific lies had no place between them. He was too candid to tell her that everything was going to be all right, and she was too worldly to believe him anyway. They'd both been to Hell and back already, and there was no fooling those who had seen the flames with their own eyes. He didn't know how to explain he'd still give anything to protect her anyway, even his own life, so he told her in the only way he knew how. 

"I'm not leaving you." He took her hand in his, making sure she was looking him in the eyes. "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

She said nothing, and after a long enough pause, he figured she wasn't going to respond. He squeezed her hand and gently pushed her toward the door. "You should go speak with everyone else. Explain what's going on. We'll talk later." She began to leave, then turned back around to face him.

"This is going to get worse before it gets better." The force was back in her voice and her face and the roll of her shoulders. _If it ever gets better at all._

"I know." 

"Are you sure you want - " 

"Yes," he answered. "Don't ask me again. I'm staying." 

There were no doubts anywhere in his mind and no hesitation in his voice. For once, they didn't need to talk to understand what was running through their minds. It was not a decision predicated on logic or reason, but an instinctual pull in his chest - seeing a single flicker of light and knowing there was no choice but to attempt to follow it to the end. This was slipping back into something entirely too familiar to them both: looking around at the dark chasm they'd found themselves in, and quietly accepting the idea that they might never crawl back out.

 

 

 

"I have zero idea how this is going to go over." Six retrieved him later, washed and changed into her black armor, with a fresh bandage over her nose and fatigue still plaguing her features. She patted down her own pockets, and, apparently coming up empty, reached into a pocket on his vest and produced a hair tie. He wondered when she'd hidden it and how he hadn't noticed, but decided to accept it and move on. Even her peculiarities were familiar now. She stared in the mirrored elevator wall as she tied her hair back. "I don't know if anyone will recognize you. If they do, expect plenty of complaining."

"I understand. What's their opinion of you?"

"Hm." She leaned against the wall. "The Strip hates me, and there's less of them, but they're more powerful. The surrounding neighborhoods like me fine, with a few groups falling somewhere in between. I'm not winning any popularity contests, if that's what you're asking."

"And how long do you intend to lead them?"

She chewed on her lip for a second before she answered.

"Just until the dam." With a scowl, she rubbed her temple. "After that, I'll probably be out of here."

Wielding absolute authority in times of crisis was simple enough. She had no need to cultivate any goodwill beyond mere obedience.

"Then don't hold back." He looked up at the flashing lights above the elevator door. "If they resist, come down hard. Give them no space for defiance."

"Noted. I'll do all the talking. You just stay by me." The doors slid open, and the clamor of people hit his ears before he even turned the corner. An enormous cloud of smoke wafted down the hall, and he recognized that they were going to the large room she'd first received him in. Six paused and closed her eyes for a second, then rolled her shoulders back.

He followed her inside, and once she descended the white marble stairs, the group turned to look at her. There were at least fifty people crowded into the room. According to Six, every organized group in and around New Vegas was represented, plus most of the neighborhoods. A red-haired woman in leather armor approached Six and threw a confident arm around her shoulder, and they conferred in low tones until the woman winked at her and walked away. A barrage of people began calling out to Six, but she walked straight toward the table in the middle of the room, ignoring the overwhelming deluge of attention. The rest of her group joined her and greeted them both, talking among themselves. The door swung open again, and the sniper appeared, drenched in sweat and lugging his rifle on his shoulder. Irritatingly, he made a line for Six like there was no one else in the room.

"You're back." He approached her, pulling at the collar of his soaked shirt, very pointedly not acknowledging Joshua's presence. "You alright?"

"Yeah. I'll have to tell you about it later." She looked him up and down. "Did you run here or something?" 

"Just about." 

"So." Six tossed her water bottle toward him with no warning, but he caught it effortlessly. "You haven't heard yet, but we're in trouble." 

"Same as always, then." He took a sip from her bottle, shockingly casual. A strange clawing feeling climbed up higher in Joshua's throat, and he stared at the sniper, focusing all of his energy on wishing he would leave. Unfortunately, there was no such mercy for him. The man fished around in his pocket and gently pitched a red and white box of cigarettes at Six in exchange.

"Found these on the way back." He shoved his hands in his pockets as Six lifted the package and inspected it.

"Ah, thanks. My favorites. You don't want 'em, though?" 

"No. I'm about to quit." 

"Sure, if that means just bumming them from me, then you've been about to quit for the past year." Six gave him a pretty smile, and horribly, dread-inducingly, he actually gave her a half smile in return. A whistle pierced the room, and the redheaded woman gave Six a thumbs-up from the top of the stairs. Six shot him a tentative glance, and Joshua nodded. She turned around to wave her hand, and the noise lowered enough for her to be heard.

"Let's get started. We have a lot of ground to cover and not much time."

"I'll be damned. Is that..." An old man raised his hand and pointed at Joshua. "That's - "

"One of my allies." Six replied.

"The goddamn Malpaís Legate. Alive? And on your side?" The man raised his eyebrows. "The lady means business."

"He's Legion." Another man piped up. "We ought to turn him over to the authorities."

Six stared down at him coolly.

"The authorities? Well, I guess that'd be me, wouldn't it?"

"He's a criminal, is what he is."

"And I pardoned him." Her tone was measured, but brooking no argument.

"First you run around town with that fucking murderer - " Surprisingly enough, the man pointed at the sniper, who was still standing at Six's other side. The expression on his face stayed stone-still. "And now you show up with the Legate? What kind of operation are you running here?"

Six stood up straight, the indignation flashing in her eyes.

"The kind that's gonna keep you ingrates alive. If you have a problem with them, then you have a problem with me."

For now, it appeared that was good enough to stay their dissent. No one else raised any objections, although Joshua saw plenty of people gawking at him. From the confused expressions, he suspected most of them had no idea who he was, which was for the best.

Their first vote was conducted under grim silence: evacuate or stay. Six's prediction was correct. The vast majority of them wanted to stay, so they began laying out their plans for resisting the possible invasion. The rest of the meeting dissolved into what could only be described as controlled chaos. Everyone was allowed to speak if they so desired - raising their hands or jumping up or yelling out without being called on. When the proceedings became too unruly, she simply nodded at the red-haired woman and her militia, who banged the stocks of their rifles on the table until the room was brought to order.

Most of their time was spent on rather dry topics: the logistics of stockpiling supplies, reinforcing their defenses, organizing patrols. The level of detail she managed to think of was impressive. Joshua had no idea how to prepare for a siege. He'd never fought a defensive war of this scale before. She delegated responsibilities to different groups for collecting everything they might need to survive the attack: water, food, arms, ammunition, baby formula, medicine, even blood donations.

"I want the gates to the city opened completely." Six leaned back against the table. "Anyone from the outskirts is welcome inside. As soon as the Legion attacks the damn, we seal the gates."

"Absolutely unthinkable." A man raised his voice. "I won't stand for my city being overrun like this. As soon as we're attacked, the streets will be in anarchy - "

"Seriously?" Six cut in and pointed at him. "Fucking hell. We had four months to negotiate a plan for managing the newcomers, but you and your people stonewalled me at every turn. We're doing things my way now."

"Seems like we always end up doing things your way. So, tell me, who died and made you queen?" The man shot back. "You're not even from here."

The sound of people shifting in their seats creaked around them. An uncomfortable silence hung in the air. Instead of yelling back, Six dropped her voice.

"And neither were you, until House dragged you in from the desert." Her eyebrows furrowed, and Joshua could tell she was starting to lose her temper. The man opened his mouth again, and she cut him off, the thunder swelling in her voice. "No. Let me explain to you what's going on here, because I think you're confused. You can argue with me about how you want things done. That's why I asked you to come here in the first place. I want your input." She paused and surveyed the room, a smart move - making sure they knew they were all implicated in her reproach. "What you won't do is question me personally. The next person who attempts to instigate a mutiny will be put up against that wall - " She pointed to the shiny white marble across from them. "And shot. Are we clear?"

It was the kind of moment where the balance of a group swayed back and forth for a few brief seconds that would ultimately seal their fates. Joshua had seen enough of these moments to recognize it. A multitude of fluid, intermingling factors weighed on the outcome - their respect for her, their fear, their circumstances, the spark of unpredictability that existed in all human souls. The tension wavered in the air. Joshua saw several people glance at him, then back to Six. A timorous quiet fell over the group, and he saw which way the balance tipped. It worked.  _They believe her._ He believed her, too. Six waved her hand, and they resumed talking, newly subdued. Over the course of an hour, they finished their planning. Not one person breathed even a word of complaint.

 

 

It was well into the night by the time they took the elevator back to his room. Six went into the bathroom to shower, and Joshua took the opportunity to look over some of the papers she gave him. He spread the map of the city out on the bed and scoured it for the best defensive positions. Six introduced him to the militia after the meeting, and with an edge of resignation in her tone, she told him they'd probably be working together in the near future.

When she returned, she'd changed into a t-shirt, but as she laid her clothes on the armchair, he noticed that her hair was dry.

"Didn't you shower?" He tapped his pen on the map.

"No."

"Why did I hear the water running?"

In response, she gave a half-hearted shrug and sat down next to him on the bed. He wanted to let it go, but seeing her up close confirmed his suspicion that something was off. Her eyes looked watery, and now that they were alone, that faraway look descended upon her again, like her mind was wandering elsewhere. His stomach felt heavy.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Joshua." His name was stretched out in a bitter, irritated sigh. That kind of moodiness wasn't normal behavior for her in the slightest. He shoved down his doubts for now. She was probably exhausted, and these were anything but normal circumstances. His shirt had bunched up slightly, and she pushed it higher as she settled against his side. She leaned up on her elbow and traced the edge of the bandages on his stomach with her fingers.

"We should head over to Freeside tomorrow, okay? I need to check on some people."

"Fine. Go to sleep."

"Also, we should probably start planning our offense."

He brushed his thumb underneath the hollow of her eye.

"Worry about it tomorrow. You're going to make yourself ill."

Her hand ventured higher underneath his shirt, and she rested her head on his chest. Normally, he'd ask her not to, but he wanted to let her stay close for as long as possible. She pressed her body against his and held him much tighter than usual.

"What's this about?"

"I'm cold," she mumbled into his chest. 

"I see." He twisted one of her curls around his finger and tried to not think about the searing pain. "You're simply using me."

She gave him a faint half-smile and leaned up to drag the bandages down and gently kiss him on the corner of his mouth. The thoughts in his mind stilled, and the mint taste on her breath and the warm feeling of her mouth against his was all that existed, as far as he was concerned. Their noses bumped together, sending a burst of pain through his face, and she flinched back too.

"Ow." Despite the discomfort, she gave a tiny laugh and brushed her fingers along his face. "This'll be interesting to figure out. Is yours broken?"

"No. Just bruised."

She leaned in toward him, carefully tilting her head and brushing her lips against his. He returned the kiss, slow and cautious so as not to hurt her. This time, his mind drifted, and he wondered how her nose had gotten injured if no one in the Legion had done it. The roads weren't exactly safe, and perhaps it was simply from an encounter with bandits or a gang. When she pulled back and lifted her eyes to him, an inquisitive tilt colored her voice. 

"Did you check to make sure?" 

"No." 

"Can I?" 

It felt like his heart had thrown itself against his ribs. They both knew she was offering something mundane and sensible, but below the surface, they knew what she was really asking. He ran his thumb across the side of her face, so well-known to him now. Every heartening detail had been committed to his memory, from the fissures of scar tissue spreading out like gnarled vines across her temple all the way down to the graceful bend of her jaw. He took a deep breath and nodded.

She moved the bandages above his mouth, gentle, and he helped her find the right place to push them down. Scissors would be better suited for this task, but he didn't know if that would feel worse - everything revealed in one fell swoop rather than this gradual disclosure. The air hit his vulnerable skin, and he inhaled sharply at the pain. She moved the bandage lower, and he could feel the fabric covering the side of his jaw inch down. It was just a tiny fraction of the skin on his face, but he felt painfully exposed. The lack of control made the lump in his throat swell. Her eyebrows creased with concern, but her thumb still ran across the side of his jaw, right against the border between bandage and skin, nearly touching him and not the barrier of fabric that always separated them. She was so close, and as her gaze traveled over him, he had to cast his eyes down. His chest felt tight, so tight, and the thoughts swirling in his head were too turbulent to catch and hold onto.

"Stop." He jerked away from her hand, barely resisting his impulse to grab her wrist. "Don't."

"Sorry." She recoiled away from him as he tugged the bandages back into place. "Nothing happened. I'm sorry."

Even as his heart hammered in his chest, he mentally rebuked himself for acting like this. It was shameful and weak, but he couldn't stand it. He had to curl inward, shrinking from the violence of her touch and her soft voice and her eyes - above all, her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

He swallowed hard and tried to regain some semblance of control over himself, some assurance that he didn't care about any of this.

"It's fine. You ought to get some sleep now."

Remorse clouded her face as she turned away. She settled down on the other side of the bed, not touching him, already moving on, and he was stuck in place. Without a word, she turned the light out, and the darkness descended on them, and he found himself still staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe.


	49. XLIX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for: violent and otherwise unsavory ideation, lots of rumination on death, mention of vomiting
> 
>  
> 
> Some business: Next chapter is soon! I'll probably post several chapters at once because I think it'll be more fun that way :^)

Six stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, fought the nausea rising in her throat, and grappled with the abysmal reality that she had no idea how she got here. Somehow, she fell back on her near-mechanical drive to stay upright: her hands turned on the tap, she bent over, splashed the cold water against her skin, and tried not to panic. Her mind reeled over what little she could piece together from the fragments of the past three days. Yesterday was clearer. Dead guy in the kitchen, meeting with the rest of Vegas - that was all fuzzy, but still reachable. When she tried to trace her steps back to the Fort, everything in between there and here was a cavernous hole in her memory.

 _It's just the sleep deprivation,_ she assured herself. There were times when she'd stayed up so long on the road that she even started seeing shit in the corner of her eye that wasn't really there. Nothing to worry about.

She closed the door behind her and saw that Joshua was already getting dressed, being unusually quiet today. Normally, he was more talkative in the mornings, and she was content to listen to him until she woke up all the way, even if she wasn't entirely sure what he was talking about. His hands trembled over the buttons on his shirt, and she instantly spotted how stiff his movements were. The line of his jaw set like he was trying not to show how difficult it was for him. She reached forward and fastened the bottom button for him, and the displeasure in his eyes told her he wasn't the slightest bit happy about it.

"Help is okay sometimes." Her voice was hushed, filling only the few inches of space between them. "Some days are worse."

"I may have overexerted myself yesterday." He sighed with defeat as she continued buttoning up his shirt. Going off of the blood on him yesterday, she figured he corralled the frumentarius she shot. Knowing Joshua, getting punched must have just pissed him off more than anything. 

"Oh, don't be modest." Her eyes darted up to his face, and she gave him a smile that came right out of the warmth in her chest. "I bet you laid him out flat."

"Perhaps I might have twenty years ago. I'm too old for that now."

He used to mention his age more, usually when they were bickering and he wanted to prove he was right, but she noticed that ever since they started this whole thing, he never called attention to it. It was one of the very few topics that he ever stepped around. The fact that he mentioned it now was odd, but in a positive way, like he was letting his guard down a little about something that was clearly sensitive. It was stating a fact neither good nor bad, and there was no need to be wary. 

"I'm here to protect you now," she teased. "If anyone gives you trouble, I have a mean left hook."

By the way his eyes wrinkled up, that must have lightened his mood a little.

"You might need it today. I imagine the two of us will catch the eyes of any more frumentarii that might be in hiding."

"Oh, don't threaten me with a good time." Six leaned over and tossed the pillows on the ground so she could make the bed. 

He looked down, and damn it, he actually laughed. It was small and hesitant, tinged with sorrow, but it made her breath catch in her throat anyway. She allowed her gaze to wander from his straight shoulders to his hands as he rolled up his sleeve, and she thought about how utterly and completely upside-down she was over him. Getting a laugh out of him once every few months was better than a hundred easy laughs from anyone else in the world.

With all of the doom around the corner for them, being happy right now felt sort of wrong. Maybe it was a good thing after all, having someone to smile at on the precipice of downfall. It reminded her she was still alive. _I love you,_ she thought, watching as the bandages over his mouth shifted as he tried to press his smile back. _I love you so much._

She straightened out the blanket over his bed and thought about saying it out loud. The impulse took control for a second, and she felt her heart climb up into her throat, demanding to be heard. They rarely said openly loving things to each other unless it was in the heat of sex, and those words had a way of being heavy with sincerity in the moment and weightless afterwards, dissolving into the air after they disentangled from each other. She wondered how he would respond if she just blurted it out now.

"In that case, who's to thank for this?" He gestured to her bandaged nose, interrupting her thoughts, and she paused for a moment, her hands pulling at the blanket to smooth it over the corner.  _Don't tell him,_ her impulses responded, but she decided to ignore them and be brave.

"Did you know Vulpes Inculta?"

The affable look fell off of his face and made her briefly regret answering him honestly.

"Wasn't much of a fight," she continued. "We had a disagreement and he pushed me into a wall. It didn't even hurt that bad. Just caught my nose wrong." It made a quiver of fear slide down her insides to think about his hands wrapping around her neck and the cold look in his eyes as he dragged her within an inch of dying and nearly threw her over the edge. It was too vivid and easy to imagine her own dead body laying there on the metal floor with the sirens wailing in the background.

Ruthless anger flooded over Joshua, written in the line of his shoulders and the angle he held his jaw and the narrowing of his eyes. He looked like he was planning to murder someone. If she wasn't certain it was on her behalf, she would have been terrified.  _That could be love,_ she observed.

"Don't get upset. It's not a big deal." She began to get dressed too. "I'd really prefer you not make it one."

"I'm not upset," he finally replied. "I wish you'd told me yesterday." The words sounded stiff, like he was forcing himself to respond against his natural inclination. He was angry, and trying not to be, for her sake. _That might be love, too._

"Well, now that we're on the topic, things didn't seem right to me at the Fort. I have a question about Caesar." 

His shoulders tensed up just like Six knew they would. This routine was familiar now.

"Go on."

"It seemed like there was something wrong with him. One side of his body was sort of limp. Was he always like that?"

"No." The response was fast.

"He looked sick." She slipped her arms through the sleeves of the stealth armor. "Like, maybe seriously ill."

Joshua's silence was palpable. All he did was turn his head to stare out the window, and Six would have paid good money to know what exactly was running through his mind.

"I see." He looked back down and fastened the last button on his shirt that she must have missed. Six reached forward and did it for him, and this time, he let her. She smoothed her hands down the front of his shirt and looked up into his eyes.

Without a word, he seized her by the hip and turned her around in front of him. For a split second, she thought he was going to push her down over the desk. Instead of rough hands, she felt her hair gently brush against the side of her neck as he swept it aside. He put a hand on her side and skimmed the zipper up the back of her armor much more slowly than he needed to. It reminded her of a move a man in an old-world film might do for a woman wearing a dress, as if they were going out to dinner instead of dodging gunfire. Very traditional; somehow not as surprising from him as it should have been. Had he returned home from his mission all those years ago like he was supposed to, he might have actually ended up making a good husband for some God-fearing woman. 

She wondered what it would have been like if the two of them met in another life; one in which war had never climbed inside both of them and broken their bodies in its image. In that world, they might have never even spared a second glance at each other.

Although her thoughts were cloudy, she still saw other roads they might have walked, other pairs of lives, ghosts conjured effortlessly to take up residence in her head. In the most straightforward one, he was under a red banner, looming over her with a familiar gaze and an unfamiliar face, barely glancing at her as he ordered his men to kill her. In that life, she could taste the sand gritting between her teeth as she scrambled backwards, a desperate attempt to escape the fate that a rebellious marauder would inevitably face - chewed up and and spat out broken by the Legion war machine. She would be nothing but another profligate meant to be eliminated like a roach. He might have even done it himself - shooting her in the back of the head, or snapping her spine, maybe. From what she heard, the Legate was a hands-on commander. 

It might have been her instead, body flat to the brown dirt, hidden behind the sage bushes on some lonely outcropping and locating his head in the cross hairs of her rifle scope, every muscle of her body still except for the minuscule twitch of her finger that would send him to his grave. People said the snipers reported him dead five times, and he somehow survived them all. She had a history of beating the odds; maybe he wouldn't have survived her.

She felt his body pressed up against her back, and she wondered if those thoughts had ever crossed his mind before. He had to know it was only by an accidental snarl of fate that they found themselves in bed together and not on opposite sides of a war, trying their absolute damnedest to murder each other. It was only because of the worst thing that ever happened to each of them that they were these versions of themselves. Their collision in any other life would have been brutal, but without fanfare: yet one more body's worth of warm blood spilled into the dust of the Mojave. They'd both spilled plenty already; neither would even blink at the damage.

When the zipper clicked into place, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck, and she nearly shivered at the tiny touch of fabric against the vulnerable skin. There was a reason coyotes killed sheep by clamping their jaws down on the throat. _A cruel man,_ she remembered Vulpes saying. Never cruel to her - not for one second. She'd bared more fear and weakness to him than any other person on earth, and all he did was protect it for her. Six never, ever relaxed, but for just a second, she could rest against the immovable weight of his body, a wordless promise that they could keep each other safe, as earnest as it was foolish; impossible, but with his hands circling around her waist, an unbeliever could almost silence her doubts. 

She thought about the two weeks they'd spent alone in Zion, filled with drifting snowflakes and late mornings hidden away from the rest of the world and treasuring each other's company. Neither of them had to kill anyone, and nothing truly bad ever happened to them, and the days felt too full and clear to be real. Another alternative life that she hadn't considered yet: one where she was still in Zion. Somehow, that one was the hardest to picture of them all. She had no idea what the two of them would be doing right now with no war to plan and no heads to crush. Just hanging around in one place, she guessed, whatever that was supposed to be like. It was like a skill she never quite got the hang of. Staying in Zion was never really an option for her, anyway, and she rebuked herself with one of her familiar mantras: daydreaming never got anything accomplished. Keep moving. 

"How do you want Caesar to die?" As she asked, she lifted her eyes to the wall without turning around. Six would consider his wishes as best as she could. Hell, she'd bring back Caesar's head on a plate, if Joshua asked for it. The question came from a place of kindness, but as he abruptly removed his hand from her side, it seemed to take him aback, like he was confounded.

"I don't know."

It took her a moment to realize why those words felt so wrong: he rarely ever said them. Joshua always had an answer for everything. As she turned around to face him, she searched him for any sign of emotion, and to her surprise he genuinely at a loss for words behind his stone-still expression.

"Well," she stated, matching his somber tone. "Now's the time to think about it." 

 

 

Their trip to Freeside went well enough. No frumentarii revealed themselves, unfortunately, but she did get to see a few familiar faces. A ratty soccer ball rolled toward her, and she stopped it with her foot. A group of kids were loitering in the alley, some of them holding cigarettes and leaning against the wall. 

"Hey, Six." One of the younger kids waved at her. "Be on my team." 

"Sorry, I don't have time to play today." She passed the ball back to the teenager who'd kicked it. "Just came by to say hey. Everything okay here?" 

"Yes." They all answered in unison. 

"You all staying out of trouble and shit?" 

"Yes." Slightly more drawn-out, with more eye-rolls. 

"Look, if people with guns tell you to head toward the Strip, you listen to them, okay? It's important. And try not to raise too much hell while you're there."

They all mumbled their agreement, and Six hoped they were actually paying attention.

"Can you play tomorrow?" The youngest boy piped up again, and his older sister put her hands on his shoulders. For a second, the girl caught Six's eye, and the look they exchanged was heavy. Most of these kids were old enough to understand something awful and entirely out of their control was about to happen, even if they didn't know the specifics.

"Not tomorrow, either. We'll have a game soon, alright?"

As they left and walked down the street, she realized Joshua was staring at her with a quizzical expression.

"Were those the people you intended to visit?"  

"Yeah." She put her hands in her pockets. "I used to hit them up for rumors, and now I just try to come by every once in a while. Their parents are all dead, or took off, or whatever. I can't really tell them shit, 'cause they don't listen to anybody." 

"They're listening." He stared ahead of them at the pile of burning tires. "Even if it doesn't appear that way. They always are." 

It was messed up that those kids were raising themselves, but that was the hideous world they found themselves in, and none of them would be spared from it. The sooner everyone learned that truth, the better.

Six sighed and kicked a rock in front of them. "You know," she began. "I always wished I had siblings, and then maybe I could be an aunt or something. I'd probably be okay at that. All of the fun, and none of the responsibility."

Her mind returned to all of her daydreams about the brothers or sisters she invented for herself. It was hard to explain, but the idea of seeing someone who looked like her and grew up in the same place she did - it would be comforting. She'd never admitted wanting that to anyone before, and a flash of self-consciousness overcame her. 

"That isn't how it works out, unfortunately," Joshua replied, deadpan. She'd nearly forgotten he had a whole mess of siblings, who all had a whole mess of their own kids. She would have liked to meet them, just out of curiosity. At times, Joshua seemed so lonely; almost separated from the rest of the world. It would be interesting to see how he fit in with people who knew him so well. 

"What was it like living with them all?"

"Loud." A hint of cheer crossed his face. "When I think of home, I always recall the screen door banging shut all the time from everyone rushing in and out." 

That was sort of surprising. She'd guess they were more like him: straight-laced, reserved, probably never missed a day of church in their lives. For a few moments, there was nothing but the sounds of the people on the street drifting around them, and she supposed Joshua was lost in his thoughts. 

"They would have loved you." When he finally spoke again, his voice was softened with sadness. She looked up at him, but he was staring off down the road.

"Ah, I don't know about that." That was likely wishful thinking on his part. She wasn't exactly the ideal person to bring home to a family like his. Going off of how insular his community seemed to be, they probably would have had problems with her being an outsider.  _Problems._ She almost laughed at that choice of word. Being stressed about impressing in-laws was the kind of problem she'd kill to have. 

"It's true." 

He was normally so verbose that his brevity hit her in the heart. This was a special kind of grief: mourning for what never existed, but might have been, had they lived in a better world. The pieces were sketchable in broad strokes, but too far away to have any of the detail that made it tangible. She understood that better than most people ever would. 

 

 

 

The next few days were a blur of giving orders, organizing people and supplies, and ensuring that a hundred different moving parts were falling into place exactly as they should be. Far more of her time than she'd prefer was spent dealing with politicking, but that was part of the job. There was always some price to pay in order to get what she wanted. By the time Swank and a couple of his guys came by the office, she was relieved to see someone that she knew didn't hate her guts right off the bat.

"Hey, baby," Swank purred. "Long time, no see, and you're still pretty as a picture. No surprise there." The affable smile fell off his face as he turned from her and dipped his head awkwardly at Joshua, removing his hat. "Uh, Legate. Sir."

"Joshua will do." The steel edge in his tone clearly undercut his feigned attempt at cordiality, and Six felt a flash of admiration at how damn good he was at this. Swank gave an uneasy nod and turned back around toward Six. He already knew she wasn't much for small talk, so he got to the point.

"Now, look, you know the Chairmen are in your corner all the way, we think you've done a bang-up job running this place, but we gotta talk about your plans." Swank sounded almost apologetic. "We're not exactly bosom buddies with the rest of the families, but they do have a point about all these people coming in. It just ain't ideal for business, you dig?"

He was right, of course, and so were the people who'd argued with her in the meeting. The satisfaction of making them all shut up and listen to her was probably the highlight of her damn week, but they had valid concerns. The tensions over resources were already nearly at a boiling point even before she arrived. With no securitron army to enforce the peace, they'd all be at each other's mercy once the battle happened. That was sort of her fault, and she knew it. 

"I'm only telling you this 'cause I know you're a stand-up gal, but the other casinos have been just eating up our profits lately. We're in a tight spot already, baby, and we need a little something to sweeten the deal."

Six sat on House's old desk and picked up one of the snow globes. They were here when she took the place, and she found them too odd to get rid of. The white flecks drifted around in the liquid, and she traced their paths while she figured out how she wanted to approach this problem. The Three Families had been at each other's throats for years, and she knew the hostilities ran deep enough to be viable for exploitation. 

"Kill the Omertas, and Gomorrah is yours." His expression didn't change, as if he was trying to piece together what she'd said. "I have insider information on the Omertas that says they're vulnerable right now. Leave the White Glove Society alone, but I don't care what you do with the Omerta property. Burn it down, if you want. Selling it to one of these stinking rich cattle barons would be my suggestion. I'm sure the benefits will be enough to offset your - " she paused, injecting a dry edge into her voice. "Generous sacrifice towards the rest of New Vegas." 

"I - uh." Swank adjusted his tie. "Hell. You mean it?"

Of course he was shocked. The status quo on the Strip had remained unchanged for years under House's guidance, but then again, House wasn't around anymore. 

"You have my permission. Here." She leaned back to open the desk drawer, and fished out a notebook. "Go see a guy named Cachino. Here's a little blackmail material to make him more talkative. Take out the bosses quick, and let the chips fall where they may. Don't fuck it up." She looked down at the desk and shook the snow globe again. "I have only one demand: leave the receptionist alone. Hell, leave her in charge. I always thought she was smart."

After Swank blinked away his disbelief, he cleared his throat.

"You got more hustle than anyone I ever met. You deserve this damn city."

He was flattering her, but she kindly thanked him anyway. His sputtered thank-yous continued even down the hallway as he left the office. Once they were alone, Joshua crossed his arms and glanced at her with a positively unreadable expression.

"You don't approve?" She sat back down on the desk.

"These matters are of no concern to me," he began. "But is it wise to instigate a turf war on the Strip with the Legion so close to attacking?"

"I'm willing to trade some temporary unrest for a better shot at long-term stability." She folded her hands in her lap and kicked her legs against the side of the desk. "The Omertas are up to no damn good, and I've needed to get rid of them for a long time. Besides, I can't have the three Families agreeing on anything, if I'm on the opposing side. Keep them at each other's throats, and they stay away from mine. It's just practical."

He shot her an uncomfortable glance out of the corner of his eye, but she still couldn't tell what exactly was going on in his mind.

"Right." He pushed his hand up her knee and raised an eyebrow, not losing his cautious demeanor. "But I thought you weren't interested in governing. Why drag yourself further into the business of the Strip?" 

"I'm not going to get any more involved than I have to. All I want is to make sure this city won't fall apart the second I'm out of the picture."

"I see your point." The terse half-acceptance was the only concession he offered. He ran his thumb along the inside of her thigh, and she felt her chest flutter. As he looked away, she was finally able to place the conflict in his reaction: as much as he didn't want to be, he was sort of impressed with her. It shouldn't have pleased her as much as it did.

She stood up and started to the door too fast and the room started to spin. She clutched onto the edge of the desk, trying to steady herself. She faintly registered the sound of Joshua's voice asking her if she was all right.

"Yeah," she responded through clenched teeth. "It's nothing."

That was one act she couldn't keep up for long, especially not to herself. In addition to the headaches, the nausea was almost constant in the mornings and evenings. Most of the time, she locked herself in the bathroom and ran the tap so Joshua couldn't hear her in case she threw up. He'd caught on to her shower trick, apparently. She never had any problems eating before, but now at the sight of food, her stomach turned too violently to bear swallowing even a bite. At times, she was forced to discreetly toss part of her meals in the garbage so her friends wouldn't question her.

After a few days, she finally slid down the bathroom door and sat on the cold tile, staring at the white wall, and admitted the bleak and terrifying reality: something was wrong with her. She'd long accepted that she was a stranger to her own brain, that traitorous part of herself she would never truly stop warring with, but she was horrified to be losing the uneasy command she'd been able to muster over her body. Everything was ten times more frustrating and exhausting than it used to be. Even simple tasks took all of her mental concentration. Making out written words was so difficult now that she avoided it entirely by tricking other people into reading out loud for her. She'd taken plenty of hits, but she figured the little stunt Vulpes pulled in the Fort was the straw that broke the camel's back. If she lived long enough to ever see him again, she swore she was going to make him wish he'd died with the rest of his family. 

 _I'm going to die._ After every unreasonable thing she'd managed to survive, there was a very real chance she was going to be taken down by a bump on the head. It was a fucking tragedy so pathetic that it was almost laughable. More than anything, she didn't want to die slow, falling apart with no control over which pieces of herself she lost. It would be an awful way to go. 

It was consuming her thoughts so entirely that one day, she cornered Arcade and asked him how a doctor might treat such a problem, in theory.

"There's not much you can do." He shrugged. "This patient, in theory," he shot her a pointed glance, "would mostly need time to rest and recover. It can take months, or years, even. The brain is so complicated, and the specifics of the injury vary heavily from person to person."

Of course, it would be time; the one thing she didn't have much of.

"But isn't there like, some kind of medicine? Maybe a surgery to fix it?"

"It's not exactly the kind of thing that can be fixed." His voice was lower. "You can recover some functioning, but it can't just be undone like that. It's a process, and it takes a lot of work and patience."

"Great." 

"Are you doing okay? Is there something you want to talk about?"

"Oh, me?" She stood up, scrambling to get away from this conversation now that it had taken a turn she didn't like. "Nope. Never better."

Arcade narrowed his eyes at her over his glasses.

"Uh-huh. I'm watching you. Speaking of, I have something else I want to ask you about when you get a minute." 

"Is it urgent?" She pushed her chair in, already making a move to leave. He chewed on the end of his pen as the thought for a second, then folded his hands in front of him. 

"No, it's not. I know you're busy. We'll talk later." He shooed her away as she apologized again.  

She honestly didn't know how the hell she would be holding it all together without Joshua. He was truly one-of-a-kind; an interesting mixture of near-constant insubordination and steadfast loyalty. He never hesitated to tell her what he really thought about her decisions, but never failed to see things were done as she wanted them. He was effective and meticulous and responsible enough that she could give him the tasks that she didn't trust anyone else to take care of.

His behavior toward her personally was another story, however. Ever since she'd returned from the Fort, it felt like he was holding her at arm's length, like he used to do before they really knew each other. She tried not to push him too much, because with everything going on, he probably had a lot on his mind. At least some of his reserve had to be related to thinking about the war, because he was giving her solid advice, as usual. 

If there was one thing she could be proud of, it was the small, ragtag military she'd managed to field: various groups around the Mojave with barely anything in common, people from the city, and exactly two aircraft, which was two more than anyone else in this fight had. She wished with all her heart that they had the securitrons instead. A lot of people were about to sacrifice their lives, and that wasn't something she took lightly.

Within the first five minutes of hashing out their plan, of course they hit a point of contention: Six wanted to hold back some of their forces to defend Vegas, and Joshua vehemently disagreed.

"Don't spread yourself too thin." Joshua's tone was almost admonishing. "Now is not the time to be cautious."

She flipped Benny's silver lighter open and closed while she turned that over. He was leaning forward, one elbow on the table, towering severely over the chair he'd pulled up, knees tilted up slightly too high because of his height. He always looked out of place here, no matter what.

"And your suggestion is?"

"Position all of your forces to fight alongside the NCR, and put all of your manpower into defending the dam. It's a choke point. If the Legion passes it, it's only a matter of time before New Vegas falls."

"Yeah, I agree," Boone put in. "Legion can outlast us if we give 'em the chance to pursue. Precision and firepower worked last time. Rangers took out the commanding officers and everything went to shit in the ranks."

If discussing his past tactical failures in excruciating detail was uncomfortable for Joshua, he was doing an excellent job of not showing it. Then again, he wasn't showing much at all these days. 

"That brings me to another point of importance," Joshua announced. "You need to ensure that Caesar is eliminated, no matter what."

"I will." Six stared at the dot on the map that marked the Legion camp. "But I'm starting to think Lanius might be as much of a threat. Maybe even more. He's gotta die too."

"No." A dark, sardonic edge crept into Joshua's voice. "You don't understand."

"I get where you're coming from." She held her hand up. "But Lanius - " She suppressed a shudder, and maybe she was more scared of him that she cared to admit, but she had logical reasons for taking him out, as well. "The way they talked about him at the Fort was something else. If we don't kill him, he's just going to take Caesar's place, and we'll be dealing with this all over again in another few years."

"Without Caesar, the Legion will undoubtedly fall," Joshua shot back.

"They both die." Six snapped her eyes up to him. "And that's final." For a tense few seconds, she thought he was going to challenge her again.

"Well, as I'm sure you know, that complicates matters." He traced a bandaged finger along the map. "Caesar will be nearly four hours away from the battle."

They were back to the problem of splitting up their forces again, but she didn't know what else he wanted her to do. The frustration was starting to well up, buzzing around in her head and making it hard to concentrate.

"We march on the Fort after the fight at the dam?" Six cocked her head down at the map.

"An unwise move." Joshua shook his head as if it were all so obvious. "It makes one success contingent upon the other. Even if you manage to hold the dam, it gives Caesar time to escape."

As usual, he was right. Six put her hands on her hips and paced to the other side of the table. They all talked a little more, and then she must have dismissed everyone, but she wasn't really able to focus anymore. That foggy feeling was back, like the rest of the world was moving at twice the speed as she was. Somehow, she fell in beside Joshua, and they were the last two people to leave the room. Everything felt sharp and painful and she just wanted to go lay down and pull a blanket over her head and forget the rest of this shitty world even existed. 

"I wish you'd reconsider," Joshua murmured. "Holding the dam and killing Caesar should be your primary two objectives. Killing Lanius would be helpful, but it's not necessary to succeed." 

"Jesus Christ, are you still on this?" She hissed. "Why can't you just accept it and move on?" Her voice came out sounding much nastier than she intended it to. 

"Because you're wrong." He kept his voice low, patient. 

"Okay, so you want me to order everyone else around, but it's not okay when it's you?" She stepped closer to him. "Fucking pick one or the other. Am I in charge or not?"

"You're acting incredibly immature right now."

Her frustration instantly soured into indignation. In a flash, she saw the opening, sized up his weakness, and struck him where she knew his feelings were raw; where she knew she would win. 

"I'm immature?" She bit off the word, emphasizing it, making sure he knew he screwed up. "Maybe I am. I'm young. I can't help that. It was never a problem for you before. It definitely didn't stop you from sticking your dick in me, but now that you have to listen to me, I guess it's inconvenient all of a sudden." 

He turned away from her, looking almost shocked, recoiling as if she'd reached out and hurt him physically. The side of his jaw tensed with anger, and he kept his eyes glued to the wall. Her breath stilled in her chest as regret flashed over her. She had no idea how he was going to respond.

All he did was give her a tiny, almost imperceptible nod of his head. A heartbeat later, without another word or even a glance in her direction, he turned and walked away. 

She called after him, but he was already gone, and fear burned in her chest. She wanted to run after him and beg him to forget that she'd said something so petty and hurtful and flat-out mean, but her feet wouldn't take her. She leaned her temple on the wall and she mashed her palm against the water prickling in her eyes. A weight tugged on her lungs, and she mentally kicked herself for being so hateful and vindictive. She wasn't supposed to act like that anymore, especially not to him. For a brief second, it felt like she was outside her own body, watching someone else ruin the best things in her life, but as she took a deep breath and tried not to burst into tears, it was just her standing in the empty hallway, alone with herself. 


	50. L

Six lifted her fist to the the dark varnished wood of the door, and she halfway wished this day was over already. Her current plans were to go back to her room, wrap up in her thickest blanket, and put away a bottle of wine to knock out the pulsing ache in her head, but she had some business to take care of before she turned in for the night. She knocked on the door, sharp and loud. After an unusually long wait, she figured she wasn't going to get an answer, but then, the door swung open. Boone had a towel over his shoulder, and his face was wet.

"What's up?"

"Do you have a toothbrush I can have? I sorta lost mine."

Her toothbrush was in Joshua's room where she'd last left it, but she sure as shit wasn't about to go up there and ask for it back. She followed him inside and sat down on the end of his bed, made up tight and fastidious as always. Ex-soldiers usually kept that habit. She still wasn't feeling well and was tempted to just sprawl out and flatten her back against the blanket, but she wasn't going to make herself comfortable unless Boone wanted to talk. Sometimes he preferred to be alone.

Boone came out of the bathroom and handed her a toothbrush, still in its cellophane wrapping.

"Are you busy? Can I hang out here for a minute?"

He rubbed his hands together and pointed over his shoulder.

"Yeah. I was gonna shave."

She climbed up and sat on the bathroom counter while he stood in front of the mirror. As she watched him scrape the razor against the taut skin of his jaw, it occurred to her that despite the possibility they'd all be dead in a few days, here he was shaving his chin as if it mattered at all. Six thought about Raul's comments whenever she asked him about life before the war. She always imagined it as a practically foreign place - brighter, happier, where people did more than simply survive, but Raul usually responded that pre-war practices hadn't changed as much as she thought.  _People are stubborn._  They hung on to small reminders of things they loved - home or stability or a better time in their lives.

It reminded her of what Joshua was always talking about. _Some things don't change._ The world could burn down over and over again, and people would still find ways to celebrate special occasions and dance and fall in love. Maybe hanging on to the little things could be a kind of survival, too.

"So." Boone tapped the razor on the edge of the sink. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

She nodded. He never pressed her on questions like that, but it made sense that he'd be worried after her trip to the Fort. Everything had been so hectic that they hadn't had much time to talk since she got back. He made a noncommittal noise and went back to shaving. After a few moments of silence, he spoke again.

"You met Caesar?"

"Yep. Not murdering him was even more of a challenge than I thought it would be. He's a tool."

"He'll get what's comin' to him soon."

"And how are things with you? Everything okay while I was gone?"

"Fine." He dragged the razor over his skin, staring at his own reflection in the mirror.

"No problems? Joshua didn't give you any trouble?"

"Joshua." The word was cold and sharp, but he didn't look at her as he frowned in the mirror. Six felt a surge of resistance welling up, like she was suddenly on the defensive without knowing what exactly she was being accused of.

"Yeah. Him."

"The Legate did not give me any trouble."

Six took a moment to assess how she wanted to respond to this. Boone had a true sniper's temperament: slow to anger and level-headed under stress, but there were a few exceptions. Anything that could possibly be construed as making allowances for the Legion was probably the fastest way to piss him off. If she wasn't delicate enough with her phrasing, he might tell her to take a hike. Instead of a direct challenge, Six decided to come at it the issue sideways.

"You hate him so much you can't even say his name?"

"Yes."

"Well, he's not exactly a legate anymore. He's on our side now, and he's been pretty helpful."

"It will never matter to me." His voice was slow, but forceful, and a thrust of emotion broke through his stoicism. Six stared at the impassive expression on his face, and she knew the matter was effectively closed. There was nothing she could say to convince him, and unless she wanted to lose him, she needed to back off right now and stop pressing the topic. She nodded, and they sat in silence for another few minutes, much more tense than before.

"Listen." She leaned her head back against the mirror. "I have to say something. Things are about to get tough. If you'd like to continue being alive, now's probably the time to tap out. I wouldn't hold it against you."

He stared at her hard for a moment, the line next to his mouth creased with determination.

"I told you. I got your back. You promised me we'd take the Legion down, and I'm not gonna quit on you."

"There's a pretty good chance we'll lose." 

"Then we lose." His voice was flat. "At least we go down swinging."

He was more than willing to die for this. She understood.

"And what about after?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"Don't know. Never really think about that part."

"Yeah. Me neither." She tapped her fingers on the counter. "Hey, if I bite it out there, will you make sure my funeral is one for the history books?" Their other friends found comments like that creepy, but Boone never did. The two of them talked about dying so much that it didn't even register as an uncomfortable subject anymore. "I'm talking a big crowd, a heartfelt eulogy - everything. I want those motherfuckers bawling their eyes out about how much they miss me."

Humor quirked the firm line of his mouth, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Maybe I can pull some strings and get the NCR to drag out an honor guard. Give you a final salute."

"That'd be nice. Hell, if we're bringing guns, let's make it a party. Full band. Open bar." She pushed herself off the counter and landed on her feet. "Thanks for the toothbrush. I owe you one." She didn't move, but stared at his face instead - a hard face that had become comforting and familiar over a year of shared struggles. The suffering didn't seem so scary together, and it wasn't all bad times, either - some of her favorite memories were when she'd pass nights with him around a campfire, talking or not talking, drinking warm beer and hesitantly remembering how to laugh.

She reached out and wrapped her arms around his back and pulled him into a hug. At first, he didn't react. As she curled her head against the warmth of his shoulder, he leaned in and patted her stiffly on the back. Neither one of them were really the hugging type, and it showed. It went on for half a beat too long, like they were unsure of what to do next. They pulled back, and he clapped her on the arm.

"I - um," she hesitated. "Just thanks for everything. I'm glad I met you."

"Yeah. Me too."

For a brief few seconds, it was sort of awkward, and she didn't know what else to say. Then, he stared at her face intently and narrowed his eyes.

"You got shaving cream in your hair."

She looked in the mirror, and sure enough, there was a puffy smear of white foam where she'd brushed against his face. She bent over the sink to wash it out, and Boone twisted the faucet on for her. The frigid water hit her face, much colder than she'd anticipated. She jerked back with a swear and stepped on his foot. By the time she'd ungracefully straightened back up, wet hair sticking to her face, he was actually holding back a laugh at her, a rare but welcome sight.

"Good team effort." He passed her the towel as she stuck her tongue out at him. "Goodnight, Six."

The smile stayed on her face as she shut the door behind her and walked down the hallway. All of the arguing she'd gotten herself into was so stupid. They might be dead in a couple of days, and none of this would matter. She looked down at the toothbrush in her hand, and she knew she needed to be brave, do the right thing, and take herself upstairs and apologize to Joshua. _And I should tell him that my head is getting worse._ Admitting it out loud would be scary, but he should know sooner rather than later, so he had time to prepare himself for whatever came next. He was probably going to freak out, and she didn't know if she had the mental energy for it tonight. As the elevator doors slid closed, her plan solidified in her mind: sincere apology, then feel the situation out and see if it was the right time to tell him. 

 

 

Six knocked on the door, and to her surprise, Joshua answered it with his shirt half-unbuttoned. It was so unlike him that she was instantly set on edge. 

"Um. Can I come in? I have something I want to say."

Within a second, she knew this was already off to a bad start. He said nothing as he opened the door wider and shut it behind her. A roll of bandages was laid out on the bed. He must have been in the middle of changing them.

"If I interrupted you, I can come back later."

"We can talk like this. Turn around." His voice was gruff. It had been so long since he'd spoken to her like that. She'd nearly forgotten how unsettling he could be. _He's not even trying,_ she reminded herself. She angled the obnoxious red armchair away from him and sat down. Except for the sound of the scissors behind her, everything was quiet. She pulled her leg up into the seat, just listening. After a few moments, she realized he definitely wasn't going to say anything, so she took a deep breath and began. 

"I want to tell you that I'm sorry for what I said earlier. It's not how I actually feel."

That sat between them for a few seconds, until his voice punctured the air with nonchalance.

"There's no need to apologize. It was true."

She felt herself frowning.

"No, it wasn't. It was just mean."

"I've heard much worse than that."

She was bewildered as she tried to puzzle out what was going on in his head right now. Somehow, this was much more difficult to defuse than if he was openly angry at her.

"Uh…" She picked at the scratchy fabric of the chair. "That doesn't make it okay. I know it bothers you that I'm younger. It shouldn't, 'cause it doesn't really matter. But it was a stupid, cheap shot, and I'm sorry that I intentionally hurt your feelings like that."

"You believe you hurt my feelings?" The scorn in his voice edged on sarcasm. "Do you hear yourself?"

He wasn't giving her a single inch, and she briefly wondered if this was a massive overreaction masquerading as an underreaction. It was so frustrating she wanted to bang her head on the wall. They fought plenty of times before, but they were usually quick to make up and move on. The whiplash change in his behavior was disorienting, but she was determined to push forward.

"Stop acting like you don't care. We both know that's not true. I'm sorry, okay? Please don't be like this."

"I said there's no issue. Therefore, this conversation is over." She heard the snip of the scissors behind her. 

"But you're clearly still upset. I don't -"

The scissors clattered against the table as he slammed his hand down loud enough to make her jump.

"This is over."

Her hands tightened on the chair and she leaned forward. "You don't get to just decide that. What are you so afraid of? You're being such a coward about this. You won't even talk to me."

"A coward?" He repeated her like he was almost amused at her attempt to insult him. "Rather bold, coming from you." 

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not afraid of you, or anything else. I came up here because I care about you."

"That's your mistake, not mine."

At that, her mouth fell open in surprise, and her pulse thrashed faster.

"God, you know what? You are just fucking impossible sometimes." She raised her arms even though she was still facing the wall.

"Then why are you still here?" 

"Because I love you!" The words slipped past her in a shout before she could consciously hold them back.

Never before had a silence hit her in the middle of her chest like a physical blow. The side of her palm throbbed from where she'd banged it on the arm of the chair. All she heard for the next few moments was the sound of her own heart thumping that somehow stretched out to fill an eternity. She stared at the dark wood paneling near the ceiling, then the cream wallpaper glistening in the lamplight, and mentally begged him to say something in response.

"Turn around."

"What?"

"Turn - " He repeated himself more slowly, but with every bit of bitterness he could muster. "Around." 

Shock made her breath catch in her throat. His shirt was off. Instead of white fabric, all she saw was a smearing of ridged and scarred skin. One of his hands was wrapped up, but that was all. She instinctively averted her eyes to the wall behind him.

"No. Look at me. Don't be a coward." He threw that word back at her, much more viciously than she'd first said it. Her gaze slipped back over to him.

She idly wondered about his appearance a few times before, but it was never something she concerned herself with much. Right now, she was realizing that along the way she must have developed some vague estimation of what he might look like, because otherwise, she wouldn't be so stunned. The reality was so much worse than she ever could have possibly imagined. His face was destroyed. There was no other word for it.  _How the hell is he still alive?_  His skin was melted beyond recognition and scarred into something only vaguely suggestive of a human. She didn't want to look anymore, so she met his eyes, the one part that was familiar to her, but there was no comfort to be found there. They were fixed on her with a severity that she had not seen in a while.

"Who do you think I am? You knew all that you needed to know about me from the beginning. All of the worst things you've heard are entirely true. I - so help me God, Six. Don't you dare look away." He barely raised his voice, but the command made her meet his eyes again almost involuntarily as a thunderous fear spiked through her. "I am, without exaggeration, one of the worst people you've ever met. I stand at your side while people call me legate, and that doesn't bother you? It's impossible." He stepped nearer to her, and she felt sick at her own reaction, but having him get closer made a visceral revulsion rise in her stomach. She leaned away and hoped she didn't look as small and panic-stricken as she felt.

"It does bother me." Her voice was quiet, and it dawned on her that he had no idea how many hours she'd passed underneath the stars in Zion and the lights of Vegas trying to figure him out, and later, trying to figure out if there was something wrong with her for wanting to be with him so badly. He drew her thoughts back over and over like the tides crash against the shore, maybe because to her, he was a problem: irresistible in all its conflict and complexity. 

With fluid, calm movements, she stood up from the chair and backed away slowly. She hated that her automatic physical reaction was as if she might have to defend herself, she knew better than that, but the instinctual part of her brain was telling her not to let herself get cornered. Not ever again.

"I think what you did as legate is unforgiveable. It's a problem that I've thought about a lot, and I don't really have an answer to it. But I still love you." 

"And what? I'm supposed to simply believe you?"

She was baffled into speechlessness. After a stuttering attempt, she finally was able to form words.

"I - yeah. That's how it works. You just have to believe me."

"Well - " His face twisted, grotesque with emotion. "I don't."

Her reaction must have been visible, because for an instant, he looked like he might stop and let her up from whatever horrible and bizarre punishment he was hell-bent on subjecting her to. The flash of mercy was gone, and his demeanor turned flinty again. Even as her mind started to turn in circles, churning with anger and grief and humiliation, part of her said that this was mixed-up and wrong, and they didn't have to do this to each other.

"You're just saying that to be an asshole, and I have no idea what you think I've done to deserve it." She scowled. "If you didn't trust me, we wouldn't be together. So, if you want to hurt me, try harder."

"Together? Is that what you call sneaking into my bed every night in shame?" He dragged the last word out like he was rubbing her nose in it. 

"Come on." She rolled her eyes, irritated that he'd bring this up out of nowhere. This had nothing to do with what they were talking about, but he seemed determined to make this fight as nasty as possible. "That's not - this isn't a secret or anything. It's just - I'm..." She scrambled to figure out what she was trying to say. She hadn't talked to anyone about their relationship, but she was a private person and didn't know how to handle that type of thing. She wasn't ashamed of him.  _Am I?_

"You're attempting to have it both ways, as usual. You deny me in the morning as if we barely know each other because you're aware what you're doing is wrong. You'd do anything to keep your head held high and your righteous image intact. I must admit that I am a sinner. I cannot hide for one moment of my life." His hands clenched into fists as he spat the words at her. "All you do is hide in fear. You're terrified of me, and everyone else, even of facing yourself. You can't live without your denial."

"Oh, fuck off." The anger rolled over her, hot and sharp, and she was in near-disbelief that he'd really try to turn this around on her. "You're the king of high horses, and you wanna tell me I'm being self-righteous? I don't believe in any of that, and you know it. It's just, like, a political thing," she stammered. "Listen, I know it's complicated, but it's temporary. I told you that before you came here. I have a responsibility to these people, and I won't be here forever-"

"Politics." He scoffed so quietly that it scared her. For a moment, he was still as stone, and she felt goosebumps rise on her skin. The chilling silence was how Six knew he was truly furious. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and barely shook his head like he was collecting his thoughts, an uncannily subtle gesture for the physical embodiment of a nightmare. "I've had enough of that for one lifetime. Allow me to simplify matters for you." He gestured toward the door. "Leave. I know you want to."

Hot tears started to prick at her eyes, and her throat felt thick as she sniffed them away. 

"That's not true."

"It is. You always want to leave." 

"I don't want to," she cried. "You think you already know everything, you don't know anything - "

"You're right. I don't know what you want. No one does, save God. You certainly don't know. There is no place on earth that seems to be enough for you." For a moment, he almost seemed wounded, but his demeanor harshened again. "I will remain here until I've fulfilled my obligation to fight your war. That's the only promise we've made to one another, after all. It's what you truly needed me for all along, isn't it?" The frosty tone was knifelike. "But don't return here again."

For an instant, she wanted to break down and beg him to stop; to sacrifice her pride and prove to him that she'd done nothing but be honest with him, and he was hurting her without remorse or pity, but she was a fighter to the last breath. She couldn't let him think that she was convinced, or that he'd won. She had to get the last word. Her heart was shattering over and over, but she knew none of this was right, that they could do better for each other than this, and she wasn't going to take it lying down. 

"Fine." She was torn halfway between crying and yelling at him, and ended up somewhere in between. "Go back to Zion and sit in your cave alone and feel sorry for yourself all day until you finally fucking die. That was working out so great for you when we met." At least that looked like it hurt him, going off of the way he flinched back. Another sob racked her body, and she pounded her fist against the door, trying not to lose control and swing at it in her fury. "You're so wrong about all of this, Joshua. You're making a mistake, and it's your fault, not mine, and you know what?" She pointed at him. "I think you get off on feeling bad, and you tell yourself it's guilt, but it's not. I think you don't even know who the fuck you are if you're not making yourself miserable. At least I don't have to deal with it anymore."

"Allowing you into Zion in the first place was the true mistake."

She slammed the door behind her so violently that it splintered with a crack right down the wood. Her sobs echoed down the hallway, and she desperately hoped he couldn't hear her.

The unfairness of it all was staggering. She never even wanted to get this close to anyone in the first place, but he'd slowly worked his way into the cracks of her life until it sort of felt like he was the one who held it together.

She was wrong. It was a hard lesson to learn, but she knew better now. She'd come into this world alone, and she had no one but herself to depend on. She never would.   

 

As pissed off as Six still was the next morning, she had to admit: Joshua always kept his word. When she entered their meeting room, he was already sitting at a table, bandaged and buttoned-up, intently glancing over a stack of papers. His authoritative posture was so familiar that she could almost pretend she'd never seen his face, that all of last night had been an awful dream. Once her brain registered his presence, she aggressively tried not to even look in his direction. She'd spent all morning holding a damp washcloth to her face so that her eyes wouldn't look so puffy from crying. After she looked sufficiently alive, she gathered her papers, put on her clothes, and made coffee like it was any other morning, determined not to be humiliated or give Joshua any measure of satisfaction from seeing her upset. She even stopped by Veronica's room and asked if she would braid her hair and make it look nice, much to Veronica's delight. 

Arcade caught her by the elbow as he passed her in the hallway, with a concerned mixture of pity and distaste on his face. All he did was say her name and sigh. No matter how secretive and flippant he tried to be, his eyes gave him away, like he was feeling her wounds as his own. He quickly moved on and asked her some question about work, but that soft look never went away. It was like he was somehow mentally asking her, in the kindest way possible,  _what the hell is wrong with you?_ and she had no suitable answers. She never seemed to. The squeeze on her arm that he gave her was extra long, and she was in too much shock and confusion to really register it all. 

Without acknowledging Joshua's presence, she dropped the papers on the table and busied herself spreading out the map of the area. Everyone else began to file in, saving them from the uncomfortable tension. Fortunately for everyone else in the Mojave, last night, once her body was no longer able to produce tears, she doubled down on her work, flipping through their maps to distract her racing mind. Things were going horribly for her right now, but at the very least, she had something today that she didn't have yesterday: a plan.

"Okay." Six began. "Here's what we're going to do. Joshua." At the sound of his name, his head shot up toward her. _Rookie mistake._ He should have been more casual. He was good at being angry and scary, but he wasn't very well-rounded. Acting like he didn't care was noticeably not his strong suit.

"You and I are in command."

"Fine."

"And we split up -"

"No."

"Yes." She brushed him off. "Listen: I take point with the majority of the forces, and we go meet the Legion's army at the dam, head-on. You stay behind and take a small group to the Fort and launch a sneak attack. Think about it, everyone." She looked around the room. "The Fort will be so vulnerable. They'll have a small garrison left, I'm sure, but they'll never expect me to hit it while the battle's happening. Most of their food and supplies are there. Burn it all down, and they're in trouble, even if they do win the dam."

"This is sounding dangerously close to a plan." Raul smiled and rubbed his chin.

"And this also solves our assassination problem." She turned back to Joshua, who was already staring at her. "There's two of us, and two of them. I get Lanius, you get Caesar."

She watched his face underneath the bandages, and she was completely unable to tell what was going through his mind. It looked like he was considering it.

"I suggest we trade places."

That statement sort of surprised her. His was the easier task, for sure. Lanius was probably one of the few people in the entire Mojave that could actually pose a challenge to Joshua. Fighting him could easily end up being a death sentence.

"No. It has to be like this." Her voice sounded flat in her own ears. The reasons for that were numerous, and she didn't really have the inclination to list them all out for him. He had to know that showing up to the Fort would be absolutely demoralizing to the enemy, as all of the rumors of the Burned Man were made flesh. Joshua was maybe the only person in the world they feared more than Caesar. Some of the younger recruits might even lay their weapons down and flee, which would be ideal for everyone involved.

"How do you intend to kill Lanius?" His voice was lower than she expected and clearly full of doubt. She didn't know about his eyes, because she was avoiding them entirely.

"I have an idea."

"Which is?"

"We'll get to it later. But that's not really your problem, is it?"

Arcade shot her a disapproving glance, but she ignored it. For a tense second, she thought Joshua was going to fight her again. He tapped his pen on the edge of the table and finally set it down.

"I accept, on two conditions. First, I may deal with Caesar as I see fit." The unyielding resolve on Joshua's face made her pause. There was no telling what kind of gruesome end he had in mind. It was Caesar, however, and she couldn't particularly bring herself to be concerned on his behalf.  _They deserve the worst they can do to each other,_ a tiny cruel voice told her, but she told herself to stay clear-headed. As mad as she was, she knew she didn't truly believe that.

"Agreed," she replied. "He's yours. Do whatever you want with him."

"And second, that this will be the last favor you ever ask of me."

That felt like twisting the knife, but she swallowed and nodded.

"Okay." The word was much quieter than she intended, and she cleared her throat. "Once you're done at the Fort, you can just head straight to Zion, if you want. Should be easy."

"Aren't there captives at the Fort?" Arcade asked. "If you burn the camp down, will they be able to escape?"

Six sighed and stared at the wood grain on the table. Of course, she'd thought about this, but she hadn't settled on a solution.

"Some of them can run, but I saw others wearing explosive collars," Six admitted reluctantly. "They'd be stuck in the camp."

"Disarming each individual explosive device requires more time than we have," Joshua said, his voice cold. "I'm afraid it's not feasible."

"That's what I thought, too," Six muttered.

"So you're just going to let those people die?" Arcade's indignation was clear, like he couldn't believe they were even contemplating it.

"I mean, obviously it sucks." Six raised her hands in defeat. "But that's reality. I can't do everything at once."

"Oh, no." Veronica dragged out the phrase dramatically, leaning her cheek against her hand, and Boone's stolen sunglasses slipped down her nose. "It's too bad we don't have a friend who spent her whole life learning how to disassemble unfamiliar technology. That would be super convenient right now, huh?"

Six leaned forward against the table, and for the first time all day, she felt a tiny glimmer of life.

"Yeah? You think you can figure something out by tomorrow?"

"Oh yeah. Besides, the Brotherhood uses the explosive collars, too." She waved her hand and yawned. "I bet I can rig something up to deactivate them all at once. No sweat."

Freeing all those people at the Fort would be yet another blow to the Legion that would make her damn month. Six nodded with excitement, even if it was thin. 

"Perfect. So that's your job. Arcade, you stay with the Followers and make sure everything's running smoothly. Raul, what do you wanna do? Stay in the city? Get the hell out of dodge?"

He ran a finger along the edge of his glass slowly before looking up at Joshua.

"I think I'll go with this cabrón to the Fort. He looks like he needs the help."

Maybe it was a little mean, but she was pretty sure Joshua didn't know what that word meant, and it cheered her up slightly. As far as Raul's decision to go, Six knew he secretly enjoyed a good gunfight every once in a while, so that wasn't a complete surprise. 

"And what about me?"

They all turned to the end of the table, where Boone sat, arms folded. Six tried to muster up a smile, but she guessed she must have looked as sad as she felt.

"You're with me." Six replied. "And that's how we're going to kill Lanius."

 _And I'm going to die._ The thought crossed her mind again, but this time instead of panic, it was acceptance washing over her like a gentle wave. She could go out fighting, with the dignity she deserved. It would be a good death, maybe even a quick one. She didn't need to survive this. All she had to do was take the Monster of the East down with her. And even if she couldn't, and he killed her first, well - no harm, no foul. She wasn't supposed to be alive anyway.

"You get into position above. I'm going to meet him and act as a distraction as long as I can." She started speaking to the whole group again. "Once I see the smoke from the Fort, I'll know the other group succeeded, and then Boone and I will take it from there."

"How will I know?"

Of course, by that voice, she knew it was Joshua who spoke up, but she paused for half a moment before she finally looked him right in the eyes.

"How will you know what?" She asked, and to her own surprise, there was no malice in her tone. 

"That you succeeded. That you're safe." 

Her eyes traveled over him, and she saw the tension in his shoulders. Underneath the table, his leg was rapidly shaking like it always did when he was worried.

"You won't." She paused, and she thought about making some catty remark that sounded witty if she didn't think about it too hard, just to rub salt in the wound of this already unpleasant situation, to prove she didn't care, but instead, she drew in a breath and tightened her fingers around her maps. Her words were much closer to a mumble than she would have liked. "We'll send you a letter or something once all the dust settles." It was silent for a moment, then Six spoke again, still somber. "Are we all clear?" 

They voiced their agreement, and for a usually cheerful and laid-back bunch, their solemnity was overwhelming. 

"All right." She folded the map closed. "Tomorrow's the day we split up. Let's get to work and see how this plays out."

At this point, she was almost daring the universe to do its worst and hit her with its best shot. Almost. By now, she had the sense that as wrong as things could end up going, some ways were more wrong than others. 


	51. LI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, this ch has some violence!
> 
> Yeesh, my bad about the delay! I was on a long trip and I haven't had much free time lately. I'm also moving next week, so it's a little hectic for me right now. I have no idea when exactly, but the last few chapters will be up soon-ish. I promise I will not leave y'all hanging :^)

"The end times are near. We're a damned people, us in the middle of the bear and the bull. Do you know where you're going when you die?"

The man who called out to Joshua was pacing back and forth on the pavement, chewing through his words as if he were ministering to a congregation only he could see. His eyes were fishbowl-round in his sunken skull, and he didn't seem drunk. Perhaps he was under the influence of something else. There was no telling in this filthy city.

"Yes," Joshua stopped and responded. "I am saved by His grace."

"Then you know the Second Coming is around the corner, brother. You know our time has come." He held his hand out, very seriously, and counted off on his fingers. "Conquest from the east, Famine from the west, they meet in the middle for War, you see." He tapped his shaky finger. "And now comes Death, marching his dark horse through the river of blood to sweep us all up. We're all doomed - "

"Pale," Joshua corrected. "Death rides a pale horse."

The man didn't acknowledge him, instead preferring to continue raving about damnation. Joshua figured he wasn't going to be receptive to any further theological discussion, so he walked away, his hands still stuffed in his pockets, suddenly feeling even more irritated than before. The Legion might be on the march, and this city might burn, but the world was not ending. No person would be foretold of the date of the Second Coming. These matters were unknowable, not always so straightforward, and human interpretation of God's signs could be fallible. Death's dark-eyed herald could arrive on foot with a vernal laugh; slinging scorn at Heaven while holding pure wonder for the same stars she saw every night. 

He watched the sun set behind the ugly fragmented horizon, golden light filtering through the crumbling gray concrete buildings erupting from the earth, and it occurred to him that even despite the external noise - all the people chattering and the music in the street punctuated by loudspeakers blaring announcements to the residents to bunker down somewhere defensible - the world around him felt silent.

It was not an unfamiliar silence. No matter how frenetic and chaotic the preceding events, right after he gave an order, or took a life, or won a battle, there was always a moment of the most tranquil mental quiet imaginable. It was a pleasure safe and warm as a parent's arms, confirmation lulling the sense of unease in his mind.

When he was a child, the adults told him that submitting to God and the Church brought peace, and he tried so hard to shrink and find it. At home, he sat around the old wooden dinner table with its crisp checkered tablecloth, hands folded neatly in his lap, watching his brothers push each other and his parents sneak shared smiles, and he wondered what answers God revealed to everyone else that He had seen fit to withhold from him.

Back then, Joshua wanted to be perfect more than anything else in the world, to serve God and his community and his family perfectly, but the fear of damnation never went away, and in the back of his mind, he knew he must not have wanted it enough. The flaw was in him, some hidden defect that marked him unworthy.

He still remembered Edward's words to him one night in the wilderness back before everything went wrong -  _this is freedom._  At first, as he shrugged off his adolescence, it did feel that way. He measured out the journey through the tribes of Arizona in the superficial rules he slowly broke: in forgotten prayers and selfish thoughts, in half-empty wine bottles abandoned around campfires, drunk kisses half-tried in pitch dark tents - always with the lights out, always, even though God saw every single sin in the dark. Eventually, his throat stopped closing up with the certain guilty fear that he would be struck dead after each infraction, and small bouts of exhilaration came to nestle alongside his dread.

But freedom never was the thing he sought. If it had been, perhaps everything would have turned out much differently. When he discovered the exquisite satisfaction of destruction - of upending a table and watching the plates and glasses shatter, the shrill music to be found in their crashing - he wondered what else he'd been lied to about. The new answer he found was simple and certain in its self-confirming logic. He swung his fist, and something in the world around him broke in the shape he expected to see. He need not fear damnation if he was its creator. 

He knew better now, and yet here he was, a worn-out marionette going through the same motions anyway. This was the role he spent thirty years forging, and he'd wear his old self like a costume until he could go home. Somehow, he always ended up back in the heart of some crusade or another, cleansing the world with fire, or so it was supposed to go. He already knew how that fiction ended, and waiting around for the natural conclusion was pointless. 

At last, then, the tension was resolved, and everything was wrenched into its rightful place. The sun would rise tomorrow morning, the wind would carry the ashen scent of death, and the improbable love of his life hated him now. 

It would have been a flawless resolution, save for one misstep: he shouldn't have told Six he wished they'd never met. The unknown visitor that walked into Angel Cave was the second greatest blessing he'd received in his entire life, and he could never deny it. In his blind drive to destroy, he lied to her, and it burned him all day like an ember tucked against his breast pocket.  _I don't need to lie to make her despise me._ The truth was more than sufficient. 

He made his way up the cracked and stained pavement, relieved that he would soon be away from the foreign city. The Holy Ghost spoke in the low places as well as the sacred, and he could not ignore His voice for much longer. He could not stay in such a wicked city and live virtuously. Here, the man he used to be hung over his shoulder like a ghost, and if he could not erase his memory and lay him to rest forever, he needed to put distance between them and abandon him to other people's campfire stories. 

Only one more night remained for him in this crumbling neon-buzzing Babylon before he was released from his obligations to its ruler. As he made his way up the stairs to see her, he tried to pray, but the words that came to him felt so paper-thin that he gave up halfway through.

 

 

"May I come in?"

Her door was propped open, as usual, so he stood in the entryway and put a hand on the doorframe. She nodded without taking her eyes off her pistol as she cleaned it. After a second of deliberation, he sat down rather than remain standing. The side eye she gave him told him she wasn't exactly pleased with that choice. Surprisingly enough, this seemed to be how they were speaking to each other now: an awkward, businesslike cordiality. After their argument last night, it felt surreal, but Six never was one to let personal matters get in the way of her work.

"Everything ready on your end?" She popped the magazine out of the well of the handgun, and he suppressed a sigh. The group she'd assigned him was skilled, but the lack of discipline was irritating. He'd never worked with such a disorganized group of fighters before. He'd done his best to instill a more standardized chain of command to make sure they were all on the same page.

"Yes. The equipment adjustments are complete." Earlier in the week, Joshua had the riflemen in his group affix makeshift bayonets to the end of their barrels, and Six quickly ordered the rest of their forces to do the same. With the Legion, they could expect plenty of melee fighting.

"Anything else to report?" The implication in her tone:  _if not, then see yourself out now._  He'd seen the withering expression on her face often, but rarely directed at him. The regal contempt gathering in her brow was spectacular. It was a welcome change from the flat nothingness she'd given him all day. He searched her face for any discernible sign of hatred. He hoped the mere sight of him was making her want to shudder away. In lurid detail, he visualized her saying it to him, with her face twisting in anger:  _I hate you._  It would be a relief.

"One issue with your current plan," he stated. She said nothing, so he pressed on. "I understand you'd like me to travel straight to Zion after we take the Fort. It's better that I return here for a few days."

Her hostility faded to weariness as she leaned her chin on her hand.

"Even if we beat the Legion, word travels fast in this town, and the cat's out of the bag about you. My alliance with the NCR is -" Her eyebrows creased as she looked up to think. "Uneasy, at best. They might try to arrest you, or whatever, and I may not be here to stop them." She tilted her head, and for a second, she widened her eyes like she did when she was trying to sweet-talk him into doing something she wanted. He told himself it wasn't going to work, but the familiar vacillation in his willpower began to flicker. "C'mon, Joshua. Don't fight me on this. I'm sure you can see that this is the best way."

It was true. However, the prospect of sitting in Zion for God knew how long - weeks, perhaps even months without knowing how things ended for her sounded like torture. A knowing look crossing her face and she leaned forward like they were sharing a secret; a suggestion of intimacy that made his stubborn heart careen, even though it was simply a matter of practicality.

"I can tell you're trying to come up with a way to do the opposite of what I'm saying, so I need you to swear to me that you won't come back to the city."

He hesitated, and she seized the opening. 

"Promise me." Her voice sharpened, and he couldn't believe he was sitting here across from her, being chastised like a misbehaving subordinate.  _Utterly ludicrous,_  he told himself. No one else would even think to speak to him that way. Six never had the appropriate level of dread that she should have in his presence. She always forgot herself.  _We both did,_ he mourned.

"You have my word."

She nodded and slumped back against her seat, making him pause. Her movements were queasy and restricted, completely contrary to her usual smooth coordination. He knew they didn't want to speak to one another, but she looked ill, and the thought of her suffering made him hold back just long enough to overpower his better judgement.

"Have you eaten today?" 

"Good talk. Check in with me before you leave tomorrow."

He made no move to leave, but instead stayed in the chair. The uneasy silence between them flexed and strained, almost to a breaking point before swaying back down again, like at any second one of them was going to crack. She picked the gun up off her desk and unlocked the slide to continue her cleaning before lifting her catacomb-dark eyes to him.

"I think you should go now," she said, as if she were merely offering some dry bit of impersonal advice. 

He stood up and pushed his chair in.  _Reap that which you have sown,_  he told himself. He'd gotten exactly what he wanted.  _I won._ As he walked down the hallway and replayed the conversation in his mind, something that he tried to bury told him that it did not feel like victory in the slightest. 

 

 

When Joshua came downstairs the next morning in the twilight darkness, he was surprised to smell coffee. When he turned the corner into the kitchen, Six was standing at the sink washing out a cup, and in his confusion, he went toward her before stopping short. He almost forgot he wasn't supposed to touch her anymore. 

"You're awake."

She nodded and leaned against the doorway, and some other unfortunate unseeing person might have thought she looked tired, but to him, the tiniest lazy shift of her weight to one side was awe-inducing, and the yawn she sneaked against the back of her hand was a gesture too precious and charming to be entirely human. There was no need for her to be up, and he puzzled over her for a moment, half-awake, hair mussed, not-his. Perhaps they could have had a life together, with a bed and a fireplace like she once said she wanted, and he'd ask her to be his wife like he should have done already, were he a good man. Possibly, some buried part of him selfishly whispered, they could have had a couple of curly-haired children he'd protect until his dying breath, and he would have taught them to play piano long before he ever showed them how to shoot a gun. 

But Six didn't want that; at least not with him, and he could not blame her. He'd break her life someday like he'd broken everything else around him, and it was better sooner rather than later. They simply belonged in two different places, and were hopelessly trying to bridge a divide that could not be crossed. She could stay in this city and use her talents to be its warlord, if that's what would finally make her happy, but he wanted no part of that life anymore.

"Let me know if you need anything." She yawned again and gestured toward the supplies in his hands. He laid them out on the kitchen table and tried to focus. Six was still standing there pouring her coffee, watching him work and not doing anything else in particular. 

 _She came to see me off._  A wellspring of affection for her fractured through the ice in his chest, and he stopped sorting the bullets out.

"Don't forget your knife," Joshua muttered, still staring down at the table.

"Yeah. Got it." She lifted the mug to her lips. "Thanks."

 He stared at his gun on the table and searched for something to say, since he had no words to express that which he truly wanted her to know. 

"I'll be praying for your safety tomorrow," he tried.

"I'll be okay. I can take care of myself." She said it without any hostility or insistence, and her voice sounded small, almost sad. 

"I know," he responded, and it was the truth, but it still wouldn't stop him from worrying. "I have never doubted you."

Aggrievement bubbled up underneath the surface of her features, like she wanted to challenge him. Her mouth pressed into a hard line, and she turned away, corralling her thoughts. As he went back to loading the magazines, they fell silent for a few minutes, and he tried to stop being so aware of how close she was to him. 

"I hope it goes okay for you." Six broke the silence. "As okay as it can, I guess." 

What she was referring to was obvious to him without further clarification: the ever-present weight around his neck that he dragged wherever he went.

"It will be pleasing to God," Joshua responded as he thought about Edward dying again. It should have been happy work, but his voice sounded flat even to himself. For the past day, he could hardly sleep or eat thinking about the task in front of him. He never anticipated that he'd step foot in the Fort ever again, and he couldn't ignore the pit in his stomach screaming at him to keep away. 

"I don't - oh. Hey, wait a second." A muted flash of alarm ran over her face, and she put her hand in her pocket as she took a few steps toward him. "I know you don't say the Rosary or anything, but here." She pressed the wooden rosary she'd shown him half a year ago into his hand, and he let her linger against his palm, the few seconds of contact too sweet and tempting to force himself to pull away. A flash of self-consciousness overcame her when their fingers brushed together, and he understood at once. 

"I'm sorry, but I can't keep this. It's yours." He ran his thumb along the worn wood, slightly confused. As far as he knew, it was the only thing she had from her life before her memory loss. It was valuable, and he'd never want to take it from her.

"I really want you to have it. Just hold onto it for me, please, if you're okay with that."

He looped the wooden beads up and tucked the rosary safely into his pocket as he cast her a sideways glance. He only took it to make her happy, but the oceanic misery on her face deepened as she politely thanked him.

 _Hold on to it._  The implication: they would see each other again. It was unclear if she intended that, and he shouldn't assume. The unbearable idea that this could be the last time he ever saw her hit him like a frigid wave.

"If you travel through Utah again, you are welcome in Zion," he began. "The Dead Horses would be pleased to see you again. I understand you want nothing to do with me, but I would not interfere."

She lowered the mug from her face, disbelief and shock and confusion crashing across her features in succession.

"I don't - Oh my God. You're so - you just don't get it." Her voice quivered and sputtered with anger before she regained an even keel. "In all of this mess? You were my closest friend." _Were,_ he noted. _Past tense._ Perhaps no longer, but it was still something she was holding on to. She returned his stare and lifted her hand, almost aggressive, as if to ask him what more he wanted from her. "That's the beginning and end of it, Joshua. That's the last thing I have to say to you about any of this, whether you wanna listen to me or not." 

"Well - " he hesitated. He thought about what she said to him in his room, the other thing, and his throat nearly closed up in panic again. He hated the need that sprung out of his fear, unfurling in his mind and body before he could force it to halt, but he wanted to hear her say the words again, and he wanted to believe her. He was weak, and he craved the soft way she looked at him, as if every unknowable truth behind the veil of this world was contained in those dark eyes that had glimpsed the expanse from south to north and west to east and life to death and back again, and somehow it was possible for her to peel back everything and see it all and still choose his corner of the world to make a space in. 

He choked down every part of himself that was in revolt, and marshaled back into order. It was impossible to string the words together, so what he settled on was a sort of compromise with himself, like reaching out halfway. He'd never been able to do any better. When was the last time he'd told someone he loved them? His mind flitted through the years, and he realized it must have been when his mother kissed his cheek and his father hugged him goodbye and wished him well on his mission. Thirty-five years had passed since then, and he'd forgotten that kind of honesty.

"I hope you know I feel the same way about you." 

She watched him coolly, tapping her finger on the mug without rushing her response.

"I know you do," she said, not betraying a hint of emotion on her face in that frustrating way she had. 

She turned around and busied herself again, signaling to him that it was over, and they fell back into a shared silence of too many conflicting impulses at once, all swirling into a point of uncertainty that blotted out everything else. He was left unfulfilled, as if they still had more to say to one another, or they hadn't worded their thoughts right, but the moment passed, and the vague discomfort stayed.

Six's friends began to trickle in one by one, and soon, all of the available tables and counters were covered over in weapons and ammunition and first aid supplies. She left to make her rounds with everyone else, ensuring they were all ready and provisioned. 

"Hey, uh, Joshua?" Veronica approached him, somewhat nervous, clutching a small black box in her hand. "I got this ready. It actually doesn't deactivate the explosives, but what it does is jam the signal from the transmitter, so the collars are like, inert, and -"

"Thank you." He cut her off. "Please instruct Raul on its operation. He's responsible for noncombatant evacuation." 

Joshua chose to assign a smaller group to assisting the women and children. He knew he wouldn't be useful in such matters, so he delegated it to Raul. It was better that he focus on the killing instead.

"Good luck." The sniper muttered in his general direction without moving his eyes from the wall, and Joshua almost didn't realize he was speaking to him.

"I pray your aim is true," Joshua replied, entirely sincere, dry of either goodwill or hostility.

Six finished her conversation with the others and stopped in front of him, and from the stony look on her face, he knew it was time to go. 

"Goodbye, Joshua," she said. "Take care of yourself. I hope your trip back is peaceful." 

An interesting choice of words for sending off a general to wage war. He tried to remind himself he was upset with her, exasperated from trying to protect her pride and fear, but the anger he summoned forth was bloodless, withering away too quickly to grasp. He looked at the person in front of him, and he saw a lost traveler on a pilgrimage to everywhere and nowhere, scared stiff of what the world would do to her if she gave it long enough to settle in around her.

He said a small prayer for her safety and satisfaction, wherever that might be found - perhaps far away from the Mojave, and far away from him, because with every ounce of conviction in his heart, he knew he could never really be done with her.

"Goodbye, Six." She reached out to shake his hand, and he took it and somehow ended up holding it instead, and she gave him a tiny squeeze. He didn't know if it was merely out of habit, but he did it back, and they caught themselves and disentangled their grasp. It was not reconciliation, but rather an assertion: a safe place existed somewhere between them, and if they had nothing else, they still had that. It would have been unbelievable, were he not seeing it happen in front of him, and feeling the sting of her hand against his own.

"You'll remember to write?" He put his hands in his pockets as the sadness pooled on her lovely face, and he wished with all his might that he was better: for her, for everyone else he ever failed. For a moment, she paused like she was trying to select the right words.

"Yeah. You'll get a letter. I promise I won't forget."

 

 

On the appointed day, the water splashed up against the side of the wooden rowboat, silver in the moonlight, and Joshua pointed to the hollow they needed to be aiming for as the rowers changed course slightly. The rest of the boats followed behind them, silent as the grave as they slipped across the river. He never liked open water, and he told himself that was why he couldn't stop tapping his finger on the wooden bench next to him. They landed at a spot upriver from Cottonwood Cove and would be able to bypass it entirely, but none of them dared speak anyway.

Once they made it to the front of the camp, they found cover and hid for half an hour. Waiting was always the worst part, but they had to get this right. He held his fist closed and low, waiting for the guard change he knew was coming. As soon as the men began to swap, he opened his hand and gave the signal to fire when ready. A volley of gunfire burst around him, and it was time.

Their initial push through the gates was clean, but once they made it into the central area, the element of surprise was lost, and complete pandemonium descended upon them. The garrison was smaller than usual, but tenacious enough to inflict casualties. Despite his focus on his main target, Joshua kept an eye out for any frumentarii. If he had a spare minute to locate him in the chaos, he'd like to introduce Vulpes Inculta's teeth to the back of his head for laying a finger on Six.

The sound of baying and snarling echoed around the camp. They must have set the dogs loose. Joshua yelled for them to use the bayonets, and spied a decanus running ahead of him. He shot his kneecap off - a tactic he picked up from Six, his feverish brain noted - and advanced. A bullet punctured the air next to his face, so close that it echoed in his ear. Without stopping, he grabbed the injured decanus by the hair and dragged him behind a stack of crates, leaving a trail of blood in the dirt. He knelt down to eye level with the man. 

"Where is Caesar?" 

The man didn't respond, but just stared at him, goggle-eyed with terror. Joshua closed a hand around his throat and tightened it, pressing the barrel of his gun against the man's cheek. The decanus opened his mouth, but no sound came out, and Joshua tightened the pressure on his windpipe. The man's survival instinct kicked in as he began flailing, buffeting his fists against his chest as he croaked out they were all at the top of the hill. Joshua let go of his throat and left him there as he left the cover of the crates. A splintering pain racked his side, dulled by the adrenaline as he scoped out the situation in the camp. The ranks of legionaries were thinning out to a trickle instead of a deluge, so he commanded his men to start setting fires. Joshua made sure they brought jugs of fuel to speed up the process. The oily scent wafted around them as they broke off into teams of two just like he showed them, and began to douse the camp with efficient speed.

"Matches." Joshua called. It sounded like someone else, far away, and he wasn't even sure if any of this was real, but soon enough, he received his answer in the flames that licked the tents around them, blooming up higher and higher. What few legionaries remained looked around them in horror and began to run. Joshua beckoned to a group of riflemen and ordered them to follow him. His side ached as he stepped forward. Maybe he'd been shot and broken a rib, and that's what the pain was. It was impossible to tell right now.

They'd left a small unburned path up to the hill, but for the first time, he hesitated at the wall of fire. The heat must have been unbearable this close. He tightened his hand on his gun and took a step back.  _Go,_  the back of his mind said. 

They were already in front of the largest tent somehow, and when Joshua spied the Praetorian guard gathered around the outside of the entrance, he knew they'd found him.  _Caesar isn't with them,_  he panicked. It wasn't possible. He couldn't escape this, not now; this was the end. Lucius advanced, his eyes widening in shock as he drew his blade, and he said something, maybe Joshua's name, but he couldn't hear anything over the roaring in his ears. Joshua threw him against the wall of the tent, bringing down one side in a clatter of red fabric and wood poles. Red blurred into red, blood on crimson, and he was kicking Lucius' body away, riddled red with bullet holes. More guards rushed them in a red flash, and he pulled the trigger again and again until he heard silence. 

The roaring abated momentarily, and he remembered where he was, and he held his hand up to stop the rest of the group before they surged into the tent. The scent of blood wafted thick in the air, and the screaming and gunfire from down the hill had almost entirely stopped.

 _Lord, give me strength to do Your will._  

"Fall back." Joshua turned his head toward one of the fighters. "Our work here is finished. Take everyone remaining and get them back to New Vegas."

She nodded and turned around, the rest of the riflemen following her. Joshua paused before the entrance, his gun still drawn.  

 _Go,_  half of his mind urged.  _I can't,_  another half responded. The buzzing in his mind worked up higher and higher until all he knew was that he couldn't bear to take one more step forward, and he couldn't bear not to.

Joshua pushed open the entrance of the tent, striking forth like a hound catching the scent of blood. An overturned bucket lay in a pool of spilled water. Empty chairs stood undisturbed, still gathered around the wooden table with not a soul in sight. One side of the room had collapsed, and the other was empty. Broken tent poles and torn red fabric rustled in the wind as he made his way to the back room, the last place he hadn't checked. His hope was waning and his fear mounting, and the blood rushed in his ears so thunderously that he feared it would stagger him.

The cacophonous thrumming in his mind imploded down to silence, and at first, it was difficult to comprehend what he was seeing. The man in front of him was propped up in bed, limp against the stark white blankets. He looked so helpless and frail, like the real Edward had been replaced with some cadaverous impostor. Their eyes met, and the man looked confused as Joshua lowered his gun.

"Edward."

At the sound of his voice, the confusion shattered into the primal terror of a man seeing the executioner he always feared would come calling one day. The rest of his body gave a weak start backwards, and he feebly attempted to crawl up higher against the bed.

"Fuck no. This is a dream. This is a fucking dream." Edward croaked out, repeating it to himself; whether it was reassurance or prayer or plea, he did not know. With Joshua standing there in front of the flames consuming everything they ever built together, it must have felt like a nightmare. "This isn't real. The fucking guards, the guards - "

"The guards fought admirably." He took a rag out of his pocket and wiped the blood off of his fingertips. The bandages were soaked with bloodstains, and there was nothing he could do about that. His heart caught in his throat, momentarily strangling his words.

The sickly smell of death cloyed the air. This was nothing like what he expected, and all of his momentum stalled. He held his gun lower at his side, hardly knowing how he was supposed to go on from here.

"You're not well, I see."

The space between them crackled, and for a rare moment, Edward appeared like he didn't know what to say. Joshua took a few more steps forward.

"The medics' best guess is a brain tumor," he put forth slowly, suspiciously. "I can barely move right now, obviously." 

"How long?" 

"I noticed something was wrong six months ago. I got worse fast. Lucky for you, I fucking guess."

Somehow, in the back of his mind, Joshua knew better than to expect anything else from him other than bristling defiance. Here he was, staring down death and still trying to strike back, hissing and spitting no matter how ineffectual, too proud to beg for his life. This was to be Edward's deathbed whether Joshua showed up or not, and that gave him a confusing jolt of emotion in response, like he'd been robbed.

"Are you in much pain?" Joshua leaned forward, his fingers working along the grip of his gun, letting the pain bloom against his skin. Edward looked at him out of the side of his eye, mistrust filtering into his features.

"Yeah. It hurts, a lot. I'm sure you're satisfied. Spare me the gloating. Just do it."

He looked at the gaunt face of the man he'd gladly accompanied to Hell, and for a second, he heard the pine needles whispering in the night breeze again. A thousand years ago, he was the headstrong boy that Joshua expected to die next to sooner or later; the person who knew him better than anyone on Earth, who saw him commit all the vile works that used to give his life meaning and nodded with approval that used to subsume Heaven and Earth. Somewhere along the way, he became the person who ensured that Joshua would suffer every second of every day for the rest of his life, and never be able to forget for one moment how or why he was discarded. Rage coursed through his entire being, suffusing a body that felt like nothing more than scars, marking him as a fallen man until the day he died.

"C'mon, Joshua." A note of desperation broke into the resistance in his voice. "What the fuck are you trying to do?"

A precise and mappable pain burned inside his body - radiating out from the left side of his chest, a raw split-open feeling aching with each pound of his pulse.

"Knock off the creepy silent shit and do whatever it is you came here for." Edward was speaking more rapidly now, trying to provoke a response just like he always used to. "Skin me alive, or whatever. Make me eat my own heart, cut my dick off, just - just get it over with."

Joshua sat down on the side of the bed, too numb to think, and Edward attempted to push himself aside with a intolerable familiarity cultivated over years of late-night exchanges against scratchy army surplus blankets: staying up long after everyone else fell asleep to share dumb jokes and hesitant details about their families and half-hearted arguments about who was taking up too much space, usually ending with an elbow jabbing into his ribs. They melted those nights away by trading mundane questions with each other that always seemed to have the most fascinating answers. Sometimes the jokes turned serious, and they talked sideways for so long that they arrived at a real point; dancing around their barely-veiled fears and sincerities they were too proud to admit they had, even in the dark. 

When one of their companions inevitably hissed for them to shut up, they'd quietly get up and go walking so they didn't have to stop talking, too sustained by obsession to even need the same amount of sleep as the other people. The ease with which they fell back into a macabre reenactment of their small habits infuriated Joshua, and made him feel like he was going to die at the same time.

Now, he had a thousand questions that he'd saved up, meticulously catalogued from holding up a magnifying glass to the fine jagged details of his pain, and in front of him was the person who could answer them all. For a second, he envisioned how it would feel to finally demand resolution to all the uncertainties he'd tormented himself with, the complicated questions that weighed down with details until they collapsed and spiraled into the most basic stuttering  _whys_ and _whens_ and _how could yous_. Edward lifted his eyes, and Joshua met the gaze of the person who'd once known him better than anyone else still alive on this Earth, and all he saw was a ghost.

They didn't know each other anymore. 

"I would have never left." Joshua's voice was quiet. "Thank you."

He gripped the pillow next to them and laid it over Edward's face so he didn't have to look. The pistol pressed down into the fabric and with a burning finger, he squeezed the trigger with no hesitation. Red bloomed across the white pillowcase, and it was over.

He took his hand off the pillow and turned around, nearly collapsing back onto the side of the bed. Only the soft sound of the gun sliding against the holster broke the stillness. His shoulders slumped down as he stared at the wall, too shocked to do anything but pull at a loose thread on the bandages of his palm. The wind buffeted the loose fabric of the tent, and even among the hellish field of fire burning below him, that was all he could focus on: the wind, groaning through the ruins of it all. 

Into the wind, he mumbled that he was sorry, and he didn't even know what exactly he was apologizing for. Sorry that they failed each other so miserably. Sorry that he never had the strength to walk away. Sorry for mistranslating and starting it all. Sorry for that night thirty-five years ago that started it all, that he managed to shove down and not think about too often, a rare moment of shared candid weakness between them when they realized they might die trapped as hostages in Arizona. They were huddled against the old wooden wall of a cabin, frantically whispering, and Edward was running his hand through his hair, trying and failing at not looking as scared as he was, and all Joshua could possibly say was _yes, I'm staying with you, no matter what happens._

Something in the back of his mind told him he needed to get out before the fire reached the top of the hill. Mechanically, without lingering, he picked up a folded white sheet off of the table and laid it out over the body. He stayed for a moment, staring at his hand wound into the sheet, white fabric on white fabric. With a final glance behind him, he walked away, his unsatisfied heart beating sluggishly.

It was supposed to feel right, clearer than anything in the world, but instead, he just felt drained. The dissonance threw him off of his certainty. There was no absolution; no resolution in the whimpering end. His grief was too sharp to deny. If the world fell along straight lines like he always desired, all he should feel right now was vindication. The only streak of satisfaction he felt in his hollow chest was that it was behind him now. Tomorrow was another unknowable day.

He left the camp in a daze, barely registering the world around him. The Fort was burning behind him, and he turned away, hardly able to comprehend the fact that he was actually back here after all these years, destroying the very things that used to be the center of his life. He looked northeast to Zion, the most magnificent place on Earth. He looked back over his shoulder to face New Vegas to the west, the city he wanted nothing more than to leave behind. 

 _Go east,_  a voice reminded him, puncturing through his foggy state.  _You promised her you'd leave._  He had people he cared about waiting for his return to Zion, and responsibilities to attend to, but he couldn't stop stealing glances back toward the city to the west.

His hand found the front of his vest, over the breast pocket of his shirt that he'd slipped the rosary into. It was close enough to his skin that he felt the pain when he pressed his palm against it. The crossroads was resolved as quickly as it appeared. There was only one direction he could choose, and he knew he was going to follow it with his entire heart and soul, because he never learned how to do anything less.

 _Forgive me, Six._  

The smoke billowed up into the tranquil sky, now lightened to a pale morning blue, and he turned around and started walking.


	52. LII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: even more gore & violence in this one. Threats of sexual violence.

_One. Two. Three. Four. Five -_  

Six counted the clusters of bombs dropping from the plane and covered her ears as the explosions ripped through the air around them and the ground rumbled. That was all she could process - gunfire and explosions and crashing and screaming from far away, woven together in a cacophonous tapestry. 

"You're gettin' close. Want me to shut up now?" Boone's voice in her ear was the only sound that stood out against the chaos. They'd parted ways at the other side of the dam with a grim finality, and he was making his way up to the watchtowers.

No," she responded, and pressed the earpiece back into place. "Please keep talking. It helps." She looked out over the edge of the dam at the land and water below. There was majesty to be found even in this hunk of concrete that so many lives had been ruined over. The sheer size was awe-inspiring, but unsettling - it felt not quite right that people like her hundreds of years ago had constructed something that could rival a mountain. 

"I'm in position. I got eyes on you."

"Good. We're heading up now." She turned around to the group behind her. Before the fighting started, they'd all huddled together, sharing cigarettes and making somber conversation, and some of the NCR cadets came over to gawk. It wasn't clear what they were there for until she saw them staring at her and whispering in fascination. The talk died down, and she realized they were waiting for her to speak. Her eyes had scanned over the assortment of soldiers and militia members and armed civilians waiting around her. She'd heard General Oliver giving his men some long-winded pep talk about the glory of the republic earlier, and she supposed they were expecting something similar from her. She held her helmet at her side, squinting against the rising sun.

"Hold the dam." 

"Yes ma'am," they responded. It really was that simple. The surviving NCR troops could retreat back to California, but for the locals, it was do or die. 

So far, they weren't dead yet, and going off the heavenly whirring of aircraft overhead, it even sounded like the Boomers were circling around for another bombing run. Another barrage of gunfire hit their position, and Six ducked behind a concrete barricade for cover. A young troop cowered against the wall with vacant eyes and chattering teeth. Six reached down and jerked her back and forth by the collar.

"Pull yourself together or run. This is how you get killed." 

The girl lurched to her feet, unsteady, but Six didn't stop long enough to see what she did. She had to keep pressing forward and force a hole through line. The fighting wasn't as heavy up here yet, and they weren't expecting such a concentrated push. Another group rose to block them, with a couple of men charging her directly. She raised her rifle above her head in momentary surrender.

"I want to talk to Lanius, shit - " Six yelled as she ducked the machete chopping the air in front of her. The other man went to gut her, and her next warning died her throat. Her bayonet caught him on the side of the head, impaling through the soft spot on the temple, and she jerked it out quick. The other man was so close to her that she saw the freckles on his nose as his eyes widened with pure adrenaline and fear. She lifted the rifle to her shoulder and pulled the trigger.

.308 hollow-points made a damn mess this close up. It never bothered her before, but her stomach was already pitching when she woke up that morning. She wiped the wet mist off of the eye panels on her helmet and reloaded her gun, breathing through her nose to steady herself. She'd stopped keeping track of the attackers long ago. There were too many dead legionaries behind her to count.

"Check your six when you can," Boone commented. She stole a glance over her shoulder and saw the thick dark cloud rising from the northeast, and her breath caught in her throat. The Fort was up in flames. _Joshua did it._ She knew he would take care of it, but it was a relief to see it with her own eyes. Hopefully he was already on his way back to Zion to get far away from all of this trouble.

Her hand slipped into her pocket to rub the smooth river stone she'd picked up on her way to the dam. It was a small, useless thing, but it made her feel better anyway. It looked like she was being sentimental today after all. Her friends had tried to get her to wear thicker armor, but she'd opted for Randall Clark's old desert ranger gear that she took from one of the caves in Zion when she first arrived. It was familiar and she could move in it well, and a tiny nostalgic part of her said it was a good thing to die in; unmarked and plain and well-known now to the people of the Mojave. 

As she ducked around another concrete barricade, she realized she never told Joshua where Clark's writings were, and she was probably the only person still living who knew they existed. For some goddamn stupid reason, that almost made tears well up in her eyes before she sniffed them back. It was just one more thing she'd never get to do. She ran out of time, and that was life. 

She caught a terrified Legion envoy, held him on his knees at the business end of her gun, and told him that she was coming to parley with Lanius, and he better run and tell the news and make sure not a single man was uninformed of her arrival. He instantly turned tail and bolted back toward the Legate's camp at the other end of the dam. She swung the rifle over her shoulder and watched him scramble to get away from her. There was still a chance they might just shoot her dead the second they saw her, but her life was the only thing she ever liked gambling with.

Then again, she had to consider the possibility they'd try to drag her back to their camp alive, and what came next if they succeeded. Probably crucifixion. Maybe being torn apart by dogs, if they were really itching to see her blood. The worst option - they wouldn't kill her right away, and would take their time to cook up something especially nasty. As with many things that she found too frightening to feel, she broke it down to a calculation: a cold measurement of the situation and a corresponding decision to opt out of a wager with bad odds and worse consequences. 

She was the leader of New Vegas who came from nowhere, who crawled out from her grave and climbed her way up to the tallest tower in the desert. Weaving her way through the hills with nothing but her wits and her rifle and the howling wind at her back, she'd waged a one-man war against the largest army in the Mojave, and stood up to the second largest time and time again. She walked dusty back roads and dirty back alleys that others could not survive. She even escaped the bonds of death itself, the one force in the world that wasn't supposed to play favorites, and came back to rain retribution upon the arsonists of the Mojave.

And that was the story, and it was close enough to truth to matter most of the time, but the maddening reality was that in the eyes of the Legion, she'd always ultimately just be a woman, and to them, that word was a synonym for vulnerable. They dreaded Courier Six, and that was satisfying now, but ultimately, it would make things worse for Six if she was ever unmasked. They'd have to punish her twice over for their fear, to prove to themselves that the helplessness they wanted to inflict on her could not someday be their own. She was an unwelcome reminder of their impermanence; the little power trips that sustained them could never be real or lasting, and they hated her for it. Losing to the Legion would be awful, but letting them make an example of her was one thing she would not allow. The injustice rose bitter in her throat, and she swore to herself that she was leaving this dam on her own two feet, or she wasn't leaving at all. She had a choice. That was her last freedom, and no one could take it from her.

"Hey, Boone?" 

"Yeah?"

"Don't let them take me alive if you can help it. The way I see it, a bullet in the head would be doing me a favor."

The pause was long, but she knew he heard her. 

"I told you I wasn't doing that ever again. There's gotta be another way." His voice was hard, and she regretted that she had to ask him, but she needed to be prepared for whatever would come. She wasn't scared or sad about dying at all. She thought about Joshua, and she realized she wasn't even angry at him anymore. At this point, she could feel herself numbing to everything except a calm sense of acceptance.

She stared out over the sunrise on the river, turning the swirling water to molten gold. At the magnificence of the vast world spread out at her feet, her spirits buoyed before she was hit by a twinge of regret at all the things she was going to miss out on seeing in this world - the ocean lapping at the shore, another snowy winter, the shining stars on a clear night in Zion again.

"It's just not worth it to me." She stepped around a corpse littered with shrapnel. "We all gotta go sometime. I'm ready."

"Alright." His voice lowered. "I hear you."

"And for the love of God, don't let the folks back in Vegas put a damn bear flag on my casket." 

She mentally ran over her business in New Vegas, trying to make sure she'd left everything in order for the next unfortunate suckers tasked with leading the city. A list of her demands and talking points for the inevitable negotiations with the NCR was tucked away safe with Yes Man. If things at the dam went the other way, they were as ready for the Legion attack as they were ever going to be. If she'd done her job right, they'd all be fine without her. There was no more work for her left to do.

The crimson banners fluttered in the smoky wind, and the legionaries parted to allow her to pass once she stepped into the clearing. Their rules of war were confusing to her, but they did seem to exist at times. She couldn't understand it, but she supposed that went to show just how outmatched she was. They might have only been humoring her.

The plan was to talk to Lanius, and when that probably failed, she would challenge him man-to-man. There was only one goal in her mind: take him out, no matter the cost.

She was going to rig the game, of course. Honor meant nothing with lives on the line. In her favorite story that Joshua ever read her from his bible, a farm kid killed a Philistine warrior giant with nothing but a rock and God's favor, and that seemed like technically cheating, too, so she was in good company. Six may not have any god on her side, but she did have a friend up in a sniper nest who was a hell of a shot, and that had to count for something. In a world where prayers for help were met with nothing but silence, people had to make do somehow.

Their group was instructed to stay at the entrance of the camp, and they nodded, wishing her solemn luck. Their hands stayed on their guns, and she hoped they wouldn't wind up following her to death today. 

She didn't even need to try to figure out who Lanius was. By her reckoning, the behemoth of a human in front of her actually was seven feet tall, at least. Six looked him up and down, with not a scratch on his shiny metal armor, and she realized she had no idea how this kind of thing was supposed to go. She'd never done a formal parley before, and this was practically the first legionary in the field she hadn't shot on sight. The giant in front of her shifted his head, impassive behind the metal mask. 

"Hi." She folded her hands behind her back. "It's me."

"It appears you are both the messenger and the message I await." He spoke with surprisingly measured words, carefully weighed before they rumbled out of his enormous barrel of a chest. Given his brutish reputation, it sort of surprised her. "So the west thinks to send a courier against me? And one so little. I am disappointed. The bear has not provided a worthy adversary to test my strength."

"I don't fight for them."

"Then what master do you serve, messenger?" 

She paused and ran through all the possible responses to that. _Myself. The Mojave. The people of New Vegas._

"Nothing."

"A lie. We are more alike than you think. Your master is violence. It bore you, awakened you - I hear it is written upon your face, where two bullets left their mark." 

"So you know who I am, then." She tightened her grip on the stone in her pocket. "And you should know what tends to happen to people who get in my way. Call your army back."

"There will be no defeat for the east." His voice raised in volume, and Six saw that he was making sure the other legionaries heard him. _This is a show,_ she realized. Of course Caesar had a lot on the line. His greatest failure happened here already, and his precious image was at stake yet again. Trash-talking usually wasn't her style, but she figured anything that could frazzle Lanius into making a mistake was worth a shot.

"There was five years ago," Six rejoined, craning her head up at him, trying to stare into the dark narrow eyeslits of the mask. "Joshua Graham failed the Legion at this very spot, doing exactly the same thing you're doing." Her thoughts wandered back to Joshua yet again, and she said a tiny apology for throwing him under the bus like that, but he'd understand, even if he wouldn't like it.

"You dare speak that name? I am Caesar's first." Lanius snarled and tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade.

"No you're not." Six put her hands on her hips. "You can ignore the Legion's past all you want, but I sure haven't. We're ready for you, Legate. Go ahead. Repeat Graham's mistakes and see how Caesar repays you."

"Comparing any man of the Legion to Graham will earn you nothing but a long, excruciating death." He slowed down, making sure to bite off each word at her. "Do you think me lesser than him?"

That worked, although it didn't take a genius to predict that a legionary would be susceptible to a little bit of dick-measuring. It was kind of their whole deal. By the angry force of his movements, she could tell his patience with her was fraying.  

"Yeah." She folded her hands behind her back, ready to fray it a little more. "You're not the only one who's disappointed here. I expected Caesar to send me a challenge, but all I see is a replacement. I guess he's trying to work with what little he's got, but -" she clicked her tongue, swallowing her fear. "I'm not impressed with his scraps."

"I am Caesar's hammer," Lanius seethed. "His will is made truth through me. The Son of Mars will be vindicated today."

"He's dead," Six replied, pulling out the ace in her sleeve in one last effort to stop this from coming to bloodshed. "Look to the east, and you'll see what remains of your Legion." He turned his heavy head, silent for a moment, and as the dark gray cloud drifted up into the morning sky, it seemed like he was genuinely surprised, mulling over his courses of action.

"Who have you sent against Caesar?"

"A friend of mine. Doesn't matter, really." She shrugged. "You have no supplies or support anymore. That's my problem with you Legion boys. You just don't think ahead. Even if you take New Vegas, you have no chance of holding it now. Call back your forces and walk away with your head held high."

"Vulpes Inculta warned me about you. You fight with words, and apparently, with dishonor." He shifted his weight with a great metallic clank. "If what you speak is true, Caesar will be avenged. There will be no retreat. We will provision ourselves with the ruins of your city."

"Then I'm going to kill you."

The corners of his stern voice tipped up in something close to amusement. 

"Your trappings do not hide the truth. You are nothing - simply playing at being a soldier." 

This was putting him in an awkward position, and she knew it. He had little to gain by fighting her, if she was allegedly such an unworthy opponent. Besides, she might be smaller than him, but she had a pretty damn big gun. 

"Are you too chickenshit to fight me, then?" 

"It is not the place of a bitch to challenge me." The snarl of anger erupting out of him was almost beastly, and he advanced on her a few steps, his hand closing around his tremendous blade before he paused. "But woman of the west, by my honor, I shall face you alone. No one will say I refused you."

"I'm not from around here, actually." Six started to backpedal, nice and slow, staying calm. 

"It is of no importance. Your world will fall all the same." He nodded to his guards to step away with a cold decision. "For the Legion." 

She raised her rifle and fired three rounds into his face. He staggered back, and the holes ruptured the mask, but he was still standing. The armor must have been much thicker than she thought.

"Don't think I can punch through that metal either. Get his helmet off, and we're good." Boone's voice crackled in her ear.

 _It's heavy. At least he'll be slow._ She lowered the gun and wheeled backwards. She needed to stay far away and keep him chasing her. No one could run around in armor that heavy for too long.

To her dismay, he raised the sword and charged her - _fast,_ way faster than she accounted for. The enormous blade cleaved the air where her neck had been only seconds ago. She spun her rifle around and wedged the bayonet in the back of his knee between the metal plates. It struck flesh; deep and springy. She jerked the blade out and scrambled away fast. The more distance she could keep between them, the better. This was a waiting game, and Six was good at those.

Blood sprayed out onto the the pavement; one, two, three spurts, and Lanius limped forward, heaving his weight. _Slowed, still standing._ She needed to get that other leg. That was the goal now. 

She never got a chance to reload her clip, but she stuck with the bayonet and kept him running for long, tense minutes. It was a dance almost elegant in its simplicity: he charged, and she backed up, dodged, and stuck him where it hurt when she saw an opening. His blood soaked the pavement around them from where she'd pierced him, but he didn't stop dragging his monstrous weight toward her. It was sort of astonishing she'd made it this long. He hadn't landed a blow on her one single time.

He tore forward with the blade, and she darted backwards and circled around his side yet again. Bright red blood trailed behind him, still spraying - a good sign, she hit something vital - but he wasn't dead yet. 

She spun the rifle around and aimed for his other leg as he came for her again. The blade glanced off the heavy plate. She jumped back, trying to catch her balance, and felt his broad hand closing around her arm. With a horrible lurch of her stomach, she realized one time was all he needed.

"Six move - "

She plunged the bayonet into the joint of his elbow and twisted with all the force she had, and he grunted in pain and shoved her down. The rifle clattered to the concrete beside them. Her lungs ached, and in a sharp pang of fear, she felt the ground flat against her back.

"Fuck." Boone's voice echoed in her ear.

She twisted onto her stomach and crawled away a few feet before he pinned her. Once he got a leg on either side of her, he might as well have weighed a thousand pounds. He yanked her pistol out of its holster and threw it away, but she was still thrashing, groping for the knife at her side. His immobilizing knee ground down in between her shoulder blades to stop her wriggling out of his grasp. The sky appeared overhead as he threw her onto her back again, and they looked like a murder scene already. Blood drenched the front of his armor, splattered all over the metal mask, staining his chest in angry rivulets. 

"Come on, Six, get up -" 

Her hand closed around the hilt of her knife, and she stabbed up into his armpit, sliding between the metal plates, frantically sawing back and forth to free it from his flesh. More blood splattered between them before he wrenched her hand away and pulled the knife out of his body with a curdling groan. He hurled it far away, too far for her to ever reach again, and it was over.

He ripped her helmet off, leaning over her in examination, and for a split second, she saw his eyes staring into hers, narrowed, enflamed with concentration, a beast sizing up its catch before striking the final blow. His blade was at her throat, and she felt her stinging skin separating, and tears welled up in her eyes as hot blood rolled down her neck.

_Finally._

_Don't scream._

She would have like her dying thoughts to be something better, but all she could think was _finally. don't scream._ pulsing through her brain, three beats resounding over and over.

"Yield."

Instead, she was still alive, and she heard the word escape his metal mask. The blade lifted from her neck, and Lanius sat upright. "Courier Six, scourge of the Mojave, you have terrorized the east for a year, and today, I deliver your comeuppance." She threw herself against him again, beating him with her fists as he attempted to list her offences against Caesar, and he shoved her into the ground to make her stop. Only one of his hands was working, but that was all he needed to hold her down into the concrete. "You have lost, messenger. Yield." 

It was an ugly fight, but she struggled against him in every single way her body let her - clawing hands, sharp kicks, jabbing elbows. The padding under his armor slid up and exposed a strip of skin on his wrist, and she instantly bit down. Salty blood flooded across her tongue and the world around her somersaulted with the responding force of his backhand, reverberating through her skull all the way down into her teeth.

The weight lifted off of her body, and she scrambled to her feet. One metal-plated foot caught her side with a sickening thump. Pain spread through her stomach, and once the initial shock faded, she mashed her fist into the ground, trying to catch just one more ragged aching breath. The back of her throat flooded with a tinny taste, and she spat a clot of red on the gray concrete before torturously pushing up to a sitting position. 

"Stop fighting." For a second, he lost his imperious tone, sounding more like the crazed snapping of a wild animal. She stayed down on her knees, gasping, and he slid the edge of his blade under her chin, forcing her head up.

The sky hanging above her was so huge and brilliantly blue that she wanted to shrink away - battery acid on the tongue blue. No clouds. 

_Sorry amá sorry apá please forgive me sorry Joshua i wish we had more time sorry Boone sorry fucking Benny, of all people, sorry -_

"You don't weep." He lifted the blade and pressed it to the thin skin at the corner of her eye, where the water threatened to trail out, but she refused to look at him. "Or beg for your life. I understand now. You came here seeking oblivion at my hand."

He grabbed the back of her armor and yanked her up to sit higher. The soft hiss of his sword against its sheath as he put it away tore her out of the dazed reverie. 

"You will not find it today," he intoned, then raised his voice to ensure the spectators could hear. "You've forgotten your place, but I will remind you where you belong."

Her mind reeled, trying to find some way out of this before it was too late. The legionaries were a ghastly human wave atwitter with their victory, clearly pleased with their general's choice. A few of them launched revoltingly cooed threats at her, and more laughed and joined in, their voices swelling up into a dull howl, and she could have cried out of pure fury.

"You won, so end it - " she raged, one last-ditch attempt at getting what she wanted. 

"There will be no negotiating." Lanius closed his fingers on the hilt of his sword, one-two-three hard taps as he advanced on her, leaning down to grab at her like a sack of flour, wobbling and unsteady on his feet. "You have nothing I need."

"You goddamn dirty coward, too fucking low to kill me like a man - " She twisted away and hit him square on the metal-plated knee she stabbed earlier, which might have hurt her just as much as it did him. He shoved her back, throwing her against the ground again with the weight of his body as he loomed over her.

"I'm going to ruin you." His voice in her ear was like metal scraping against concrete, chilling her down to the bone, and she stared off into the horrid blue sky, cringing in fear. A disgusting calm overtook his demeanor, as if he were merely trying to reason through a mundane matter. "Yet, you have pleased me with your display of bravery. Contrary to your claims, I am an honorable man. I offer you a rare gift." He leaned over her, pressing the air out of her again, so close to her face that she could hear his labored breath echoing inside his mask. Despite his bragging, his heavy sharp body was slackening against hers.  _He's bleeding out. Weakening. Almost there_. "Yield," he sputtered, "and I will allow you to watch the west burn."

She heard the cheering of the Legion and explosions and gunfire and Boone's heart-ripping plea in her ear _God Six don't make me do this please don't -_

She threw her body up against Lanius yet again and forced her hands up underneath the cold metal. Maybe it was futile and she was desperate but there was no other choice. She had to make it happen.

Huge fingers shoved down into the warmth of her skin and muscle, and that was when she started screaming so violently that nothing else in the universe seemed to exist but the pain. The pain in her head was horrific, unlike anything she'd ever known; a pain that tore her to shreds and stitched her back together just to tear again, like two red hot pokers had split her skull open. A crack resounded above her and the screaming stopped and turned into choking as fluid filled her mouth and nose and throat and she was breathing water underneath an enormous weight crushing her lungs, drowning -

The warm water dripping on her forehead was the last thing that tethered her to reality, and for a few seconds, she was alone in the vast, dark, empty world, and a sense of pure calm washed over her. Everything hurt so bad that she couldn't hear sounds anymore, but the darkness whispered to her with a voiceless voice from within her own mind, siren-smooth, luring her forward. The gentle drops of water swelled to a flood, and she let it guide her into the darkness once again. 


End file.
